


Wait

by roseselavy



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Developing Relationship, Drug Use, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Inter-library loans, Knitwear, M/M, So much talking, so much UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:46:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 78,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseselavy/pseuds/roseselavy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liberal arts AU. Sherlock Holmes is a reclusive literary writer in need of a flatmate after burning through his latest book advance, John Watson is midway through a PhD in art history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

An ordinary case-- that alone should have clued him in. How many stories has he himself started that way, a character stumbling into trouble through a foolish sense of security? An idiotic mistake.

He understands now that his second mistake had been letting John follow his own nose, letting him investigate alone. He must have forgotten that even when a case is a low-paying, low-stakes waste of time, the criminal parties are not excluded from being heavily invested in its outcome.

That night, by the time Sherlock had discovered the blackmailer to be, in fact, his client’s daughter, and engaged in a brief, unengaging verbal joust with her, John had been absent for a good half hour. Knowing John to not be one to miss the dénouement if it can be helped, Sherlock had grown suspicious and headed through the hotel’s kitchen in search of him. He found himself in the alleyway, with the smell of the same generic vegetal unpleasantness he had come to associate with the work-end of any commercial kitchen. As he walked, he had vaguely hoped that John had uncovered in the storage area a smuggling ring, or a prostitution ring, or any kind of ring, really, if it had the potential to un-waste his night.

Instead, he found John lying in a pile of broken-down produce boxes, bloodied and unmoving.

His first response was a quiet kind of panic that went through him with force enough to hollow him out. His second was concern that he had made an error in the case. His third had been to go to him, pulling out his phone as he moved, panic transmuting to dread as he looked for bullet wounds, stab wounds, head wounds. John was bleeding heavily from his side, he could see, the dirty corrugated cardboard under him gone soft with blood.

He had called an ambulance, white noise in his ears, and submitted faithfully to their instructions. His hands were turned red by John. Authorities were on their way; one of the only times in his life this came as a promise and not a threat. John’s hand had been twisted in a way Sherlock couldn't look at long enough to fully comprehend, his face reddened and ruined. He had a pulse.

Now, the hospital, Sherlock waits for him.

\---

John is in intensive care. Sherlock is unshaven and recalcitrant. John’s sister has appeared, but hasn’t said a word. They've been sitting across from each other in the hall for decades, seemingly; Sherlock with his legs sprawled in front of him, her with her purse held tightly in her lap. Sherlock is fine with the arrangement-- he’s had his fair share of daggers glared at him in the past, with no ill-effects to his health so far. Small talk (small talk with family members of those one has directly harmed), he believes to be far worse for the constitution.

There are a number of details that sting like a barb when they come to him. The image of John’s right hand, bent sickeningly where it lay on the concrete. John is left-handed. John is left-handed, writes with his left, favours his left in almost every situation. Sherlock knows this, has watched those hands at work countless times (too much of the time), but he needs confirmation, wants to shake him consious and hand him a pencil and just be sure beyond doubt. The thought of being mistaken turns his stomach.

Another difficult thought is how much, and how absurdly, he wishes for John’s company. How much easier it would be with his stability, his humour, his cool head, his occasional hot head. He wants to rail against this with him, wants to work the case late into the night until they find who is responsible. He wants absolution from him. He wants him close.

Sherlock is surprised to find he is entirely uninterested in the medical specifics of John’s condition. If he hears it too clearly, he suspects, if he understands it in detail, it will be unbearable. He feels his eyes glaze over as the doctor speaks. _Get to the point. Can I take him home, yes or no._

Eventually, they’re given permission to move from the hall to the bedside. Sherlock thinks about the sister, to take a break from thinking about John. He knows she’s aching for a drink. He understands; he’s aching for something harder. He entertains the thought of bonding over shared histories of substance abuse, but suspects _semi-recovered drug user_ is not a trait that would endear him to her at this point. They have another thing in common, although he can’t imagine a bedside discussion of their sexual preferences being received well, either.

Another similarity: they both blame him.

Another: they both love John.

\---

He holds onto clues from the alleyway with something close to guilt; that anything registered at all is one for the CV. _Able to solve crime while administering critical first aid to someone I have overwhelming and complicated feelings towards._

Deliberate injury of John’s right hand: inconclusive. To focus on the hand suggests they know John’s field. To not know which hand is dominant suggests poor research. Could be coincidental.

A bloody footprint: he can’t be blamed for noticing that. He could be blamed for photographing it, possibly, but John was being cared for by that point. Besides, John wouldn’t stand for improper documentation of evidence.

\--

The sister snaps in the carpark. Sherlock is smoking alone, needing to clear out the smell of hospital disinfectant in his mouth with something more useful. She is returning from her car when she sees him, crossing the grey expanse and pushing him hard enough to almost lose his balance on the concrete ledge where he had been perched.

Sherlock says nothing, just drops down to stand in front of her, flicking his cigarette away. She seems unsettled by this, wavers in her anger.

“Do you _speak_?” she asks, after a long moment of silence.

“I do,” Sherlock says quietly. She and John could be twins, almost, the sister harder in some ways, softer in others. He had seen a photo, once, tacked above John’s desk, but the resemblance is more pronounced in person. “What’s your name?”

“Harry,” she says. “I won’t say I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“John hasn’t spoken of you,” Sherlock says, but that isn’t entirely true. John has spoken of her, but not to Sherlock, not directly. The name Harry has come up, once or twice, and is filed away under open cases in his mind. It would be a mistake to let on to her how avidly he collects John’s minutiae, facts gleaned from overheard phone conversations, text messages he glimpses on the screen on of his phone. It would be a mistake to let John know that, too, even though he must suspect.

“I doubt I come up very often. I know your name.” Sherlock nods, shakes out a new cigarette silently. “A.C. Smith.”

Sherlock pauses momentarily, cupping the flame of his lighter with his hand, then flips it closed, takes a long drag. “Sherlock Holmes, actually.”

Harry quirks an eyebrow, pulls a black elastic of her wrist, rakes her hair into a ponytail, businesslike. “I want you to fuck off. Leave John alone.”

“Sorry,” Sherlock says through a lungful of smoke. “Not happening.” Harry straightens, Sherlock can see in her eyes she thinks she’s pulling an ace from her sleeve. “If you think knowing my pen name is viable dirt on me, you're mistaken.”

She pauses, folds her arms. A loose strand of hair falls out of her ponytail. “I searched online, got nothing. No one else has made the connection. That seems like dirt to me.”

“I’ll rephrase,” Sherlock says quietly, flicks ash into the gutter. “Whatever that would do to my career, my private life-- that’s not nearly enough to make me leave him here.”

“It’s _your fault_ \--”

“I know.” Sherlock cuts her off. She looks enough like him to complicate things. “I also know he would be furious at the both of us if he heard that.”

Harry looks away and Sherlock studies her, tries to break that face apart, find pieces of John in it.

“Give me one of those,” she says after a long pause, and Sherlock shakes a cigarette loose for her. She takes it wordlessly, looks at him as if she’s expecting him to light it for her-- to his surprise, he does, without a second thought.

\---

Five months, since John arrived. Five months to start radically reassessing certain fundamental assumptions about oneself. Assumptions such as, _I work best alone_. Such as, _I have little romantic inclination_.

Such as, _my life is a greyed-out void without using, and nothing can change that._

\---

The answer, banal as it is, comes to him that night. Hours spent on the moulded plastic chairs in the hallway, re-exiled from John's softly-breathing side by Harry, seemed to cause enough discomfort to allow him to transcend the fog of worry and self-recrimination that had taken hold of him since the incident. A cramp-inflicted meditation, a quasi-transcendent clearing of the mind? No, of course, he overstates the achievement: the answer of John's attacker so obvious as to be embarrassing. Five more minutes more on the scene and he would have remembered to tie up the last loose end, the daughter's shy, periphery-dwelling boyfriend, whom he now realises to be the only possible deliverer of the blackmail messages, and his third mistake.

As he calls it in he feels a kind of relief, not due to pride in his shoddy work, but of being able to think only of John, to be able to now peer through the window at him with the single-mindedness that he deserves. It's another kind of meditation, a provisional mantra he repeats to himself: _heal, heal, heal._


	2. Chapter 2

John feels very little when he wakes up, heavy with a grogginess of the sort one gets from a too-long nap on a humid afternoon. He knows something's wrong, but feels no soap-opera moment of bewilderment at his medical surroundings. Instead he just lies there, in the ambient hospital noise, dreading what is to come next.

Harry is there, moving to her feet, and John feels a rush of warmth towards her. He reaches out for her hand, but finds his own is done up in an elaborate-looking cast. He frowns at it, turns it over, and receives for his efforts a jolt of pain, as if its very movement through the air is enough to disturb whatever injury lies underneath the plaster.

He loses the next hour or so receiving tests, information, drugs. He hears a catalogue of his injuries, both major and minor, but can't seem to focus enough to pay them mind. He sees at one point Sherlock pacing in the hall outside, and wonders why he won't come in, in the same way vague way you can question logic in a dream one moment, only to forget entirely that it ever seemed odd the next.

He can tell that he is thinking more clearly when the pain returns, and decides to use the time between doses to question Harry. She explains to him the attack, which he only dimly remembers, and then launches into commentary on Sherlock's shocking and depraved irresponsibility and callousness _which, you know, John, caused this whole--_

It's then he remembers that he saw Sherlock outside, but when he looks out to him in the hall, he's gone.

The topic of Sherlock and his various failings is one that Harry returns to whenever John is lucid enough to keep his eyes open. John wonders how she managed to form such a strong opinion in the first place, but hasn't the energy to engage too seriously in rebuttal. What could he say, in any case-- with Harry there at his bedside, and Sherlock apparently somewhere more interesting.

"What were you _doing_ there, anyway?" she asks him after a changing of dressings that had left him weak-limbed and faintly nauseated.

"Don't worry about it," John mumbles.

"I don't think I'm out of bounds asking how you got stabbed hanging out in the back of a hotel kitchen in--"

"Look, it's a long story. Sherlock was working, I was just tagging along--"

"He's a novelist."

"He has a part-time job."

"In a kitchen?"

"No, he's, sometimes he does jobs, like a consultant. Like a private detective. A consultant... detective. He's very good at it."

Harry makes an low sound of derision, sits back in her chair with her arms crossed.

"And you just happened to be at work with him. Your flatmate of six months."

 _Less._ "I know, Harry, it's unusual, it's--" John drops his head back, looks to the ceiling. More urgent to him than Harry's disapproval is Sherlock's absence. He feels himself start to believe her, begin to wonder with new clarity what on earth he had been doing. Outside the orbit of Sherlock's strange charisma, he feels foolish. He has his own work, his own life, and here he is in hospital, completely abandoned by the person he thought he was-- what, helping? Observing? Following around like a damned lost puppy, ridiculous him.

"He was here. Before?" John asks, and he can see in her hesitance to reply that yes, he was. "Why did he go?"

"Well, John, I guess he's just too importa--"

"Okay, Harry."

"I don't know, I told him to get lost repeatedly, maybe he finally listened," Harry says. She arranges the pleats in her calf-length skirt with a violent swoop, as if brushing away the very memory of speaking to him.

Later that afternoon John is moved from intensive care to a private room, the size and opulance of which John has a feeling isn't covered by the NHS, although all his attempts to get to the bottom of the situation fail. It's at this point Harry agrees to go home to finally sleep, and to release John's phone to him, two developments that improve John's wellbeing considerably.

His phone is cluttered with concerned messages; Harry must have got the word out. John dismisses them for the time being with a faint sense of guilt: the prospect of having visitors is a painful one. Instead, he sends one message-- a petty, pathetic message that makes him cringe the second he presses send.

_I'm fine._

Sherlock doesn't reply for almost an hour:

_Coming._

\---

"I think there's about fifteen minutes of visiting hours left," John says, unable to keep the edge out of his voice as Sherlock sweeps in and drags a chair close to the bedside. "Clever you."

"Don't worry about that," Sherlock says dismissively.

"Had a prior engagement?"

Sherlock doesn't respond, looking John over with a closed expression, then turns to cast his eyes around the room in a way that makes John more convinced he had a hand in its procurement.

"I wanted to be there when they arrested him," he says, once he seemed to have his fill of processing the room and its contents, John included. John's eyes widen a little-- partially at his own surprise that the actual perpetrator hadn't crossed his mind until now. For all Harry's talk, Sherlock may as well have crushed his metacarpals himself.

"They arrested him?"

"It was the boyfriend, you remember, we talked to him at the track. He panicked, and when he saw you..."

"So he's--?"

"Being processed," Sherlock nods. He looks down with an expression John can't quite place. "I'm sorry."

"Don't you start, too. I've heard enough about your shortcomings from Harry--" Sherlock laughs quietly, not entirely convincingly, his eyes fixed on a point on the ground. "You two hit it off, I see."

"How do you feel?" Sherlock interrupts.

"Ready to make a break for it."

"You look awful."

"Makes two of us," John mumbles, a little crossly. Sherlock looks as though he has been up as long as Harry had, unshaven, dark-eyed and wild-haired. _Awful maybe isn't the right word_ , John thinks with a small rush, letting his eyes linger on him a long moment. "Thank you, by the way. For finding me, and--"

"Don't." Sherlock's voice sounds rough.

"Don't _you_... so dramatic," John sighs, propping himself up to take a sip of water. The wound at his side screams a complaint at the movement. "Listen, if I have to stay here, can you bring me--" Sherlock seems to remember something as John speaks, and drags a bag onto his lap. He unpacks a laptop, three heavily-bookmarked library books, a battered exercise book he had been using for note-taking, setting them within arms' reach on a spare chair. "That stuff," John trails off. "Ta."

Sherlock nods once, still avoiding John's eyes. He folds the now-empty bag and drops it on top of the pile, then straightens a little, smooths his hands over his knees. "What else? Do you need... anything else."

"Just read my mind and figure it out, like usual," John sighs, lying back down again, stretching his legs out experimentally.

"I told you, observation and logic isn't mind-readi--"

John gives him a look that's evidentially enough to shut him up, and finally Sherlock looks back at him, something in his expression more open than John can remember ever seeing in him. He reaches out with his good hand to touch his arm, and at that Sherlock swallows hard, looks down again. It's hard to imagine him looking that way half a year ago, the same rude Sherlock who had whisked him through the flat while picking up details on his PhD topic, his financial situation, his bleak year in Berlin. And yet even as his head spun at it, at the time, there had been something else that had swept him up and bore him over his very reasonable concerns about living with him, some desire to know more about this person, and for that person to know him.

"I think you could use a good night's sleep," John says gently, stroking the tips of his fingers along Sherlock's sleeved forearm, as if to settle him. "Yeah?"

Sherlock nods mutely, seeming to stiffen a little at the contact. "I'm going to ask for a different nurse for you. The one now barely graduated, and has a drinking problem."

"He's fine."

"And make sure you keep an eye on the middle-aged woman across the hall. Kleptomaniac."

"She's got a broken leg."

"And--"

"Get out of here," John says gently, catching Sherlock's gaze. "Go."

"Can I message you?" Sherlock asks, and when John raises his eyebrows in surprise-- not like him to ask permission-- Sherlock shrugs a little.

"Come see me tomorrow. And, yes. I'll update you if I start dying."

"Don't even say that," Sherlock says in one breath. "If you saw yourself back there, you wouldn't say that. John."

John feels himself flush at that, at Sherlock saying his name with gravity. He nods once, a barely-there movement, and swallows. Sherlock moves to his feet, seems to hesitate a second, then reaches out to brush a strand of hair away from John's temple, his touch somehow electric.

"I'll bring food. Tomorrow."

 _Just bring you_ , John wants to say, but instead smiles gratefully.

When Sherlock leaves, the silence fills the room with an almost tangible weight, John fixing his eyes on a steadily blinking light on some piece of machinery, letting it grow penumbral and diffuse as he relaxes his focus, the room blurring out. Sherlock can't have reached the car park yet before the first message comes in, the sudden buzz of his phone making him jump.

_And don't eat any pudding they send you... best to not ask why._


	3. Chapter 3

John is in pain, is listless, is bored.

John has written a shopping list, with annotations Sherlock presumes were intended to be helpful, which is how he finds himself wandering through the supermarket almost at random, scouting out requested items one by one. It's inefficient, but the best Sherlock can manage while anxious and overstimulated.

The food John has requested falls mainly into two categories-- cheese or chocolate-covered, which is an interesting deviation from his norm. With the best intentions, and a slight concern for John’s health, he ventures with his cart into the produce section, only to retreat immediately, flustered. In the medicine aisle he spots a shelf of vitamins, and consoles himself by buying what he hopes is a sufficient amount and variety to keep John from actual malnutrition.

He makes a detour on the way back for one other purchase.

John is asleep on the couch when he returns, and Sherlock leans over the back to study him guiltily. The laceration under his eye almost entirely healed, now. The bruises have faded from heartbreaking to potentially roguish. The cast on his hand conceals the worst of it, and Sherlock derives some small sense of comfort from the sense that the injury is swaddled, reinforced, hidden.

John stirs in his sleep, as if he can sense Sherlock’s presence and is unsettled by it, then blinks his eyes open slowly. Sherlock straightens and draws back from where he was leaning, expecting John to be startled, but instead he smiles faintly, shifts onto his back. He squints up at him. The sun has almost set, now, the living room lit by a few stray lamps that seem to serve merely to illuminate mainly the clutter surrounding them. “How’d you go?”

“Well, I had a terrible time,” Sherlock says, resettling with folded arms on the back of the couch. “But I managed.”

“Crisps?”

“Many types.”

“My prince,” John says as he rubs his face and props himself up. Sherlock can’t help but watch, assessing the difficulty of his movement, until John tires of it and lies down again, drapes his uninjured arm over his face.

“Stop looking at me like you’re my doctor.”

Sherlock shrugs, scoops a blanket up from where it had fallen beside the couch. “A doctor brings you medicine, you know.”

“Let’s not pathologise my binge-eating," John sighs. Sherlock shakes his head, pulls a folded ziplock bag from his cardigan pocket and silently offers it to him. John’s eyes widen, examining it with a small sound of pleasure. “Sherlock Holmes. You bought me weed.”

“I thought it might help with the sleep. I know the painkillers aren’t agreeing with you,” Sherlock says, inordinately pleased at John’s reaction, and at himself, for seeing his old dealer and walking away with a fourth of some strain with a ridiculous name and nothing useful at all for personal use.

“That’s... so thoughtful, thanks, Sherlock,” John says, still sounding faintly surprised. “I really thought you kind of, I don’t know, kind of disliked drugs?”

Sherlock looks up from folding the blanket, drops it over John’s legs. “Really.”

“I suppose you don’t remember, one week you were hanging about in your bathrobe so much I suspected you of being on something, when I first moved in--”

“I remember.”

“Well, you got a bit cross, actually, when I tried to bring it up.” John smiles, shakes his head. “So, I just thought...”

Sherlock nods once, allows himself a moment to reflect on this strange new world, one where he could appear to be judgemental about drug-taking. Somewhere, Mycroft is smiling. On the other hand, he thinks, he does have a habit of overestimating John’s powers of observation, particularly when it comes to Sherlock’s faults, as though John is unwilling to turn too harsh a beam on him. John is watching Sherlock curiously, so he asks, “Are you hungry?”

“Ask me after you roll me a joint,” John says hopefully, waving his cast as if to convince Sherlock. Sherlock smiles despite himself, does a lap of the flat-- a pair of scissors from his desk, a clean ashtray from under the kitchen sink, his tobacco and papers from his coat pocket. John has settled against the arm of the couch, Sherlock can feel his eyes on him as he drops to sit on the floor in front of him.

“Did you get some sleep?” he asks as he picks up the scissors, picking out a bud and shredding it into the ashtray.

“I slept. Bad dream.”

“What was it?” Sherlock asks, and John laughs.

“Are you asking me about my dreams?”

“You can talk about your wishes, too, if you'd like,” Sherlock says dryly. He looks up at John as he tears a strip from the cardboard sleeve of his papers.

“I dreamed about-- you know what, it’s stupid. It was the obvious.”

Sherlock nods once, leans forward to smooth John’s hair on an impulse, realising halfway there that it’ll do more harm than good, and he sees it in John’s face, faint surprise shifting to uncertainty, a polite smile. Sherlock decides he’s committed, rests his hand at the base of John’s neck. “It’s not stupid, but you are safe now.”

Sherlock sees John hesitate, then he nods once, his eyes hard on him. Sherlock moves away, settles back to rolling the joint for John.

“I know,” John says after a long moment, and Sherlock glances up over the edge of the paper as he licks a strip across it. He twists the end closed and hands it to John silently, then picks up his lighter and shifts close, flicking it open. John swallows as if he’s uncomfortable, but lowers his head to the flame, steadies Sherlock’s hand with fingers light at his wrist. Sherlock’s throat tightens, slightly, at the sight of him with his eyelashes lowered, and at the way his fingers linger at his wrist as he draws back. John rests his head against the arm of the couch as he exhales, then looks to Sherlock, offers the joint silently. Sherlock shakes his head.

“Oh, come on,” John says, laughs slightly.

Sherlock rolls his eyes, concedes his loss, takes a hit. “Happy?”

“I’ll get there,” John smiles, takes the joint back as Sherlock offers it. “I can’t decide-- is it a relief to slow that brain down a little, or is it your worst nightmare?”

Sherlock thinks for a moment, hesitant to disclose too much. “It's fine when you’re coming down.”

John looks interested at that, watches Sherlock thoughtfully. “So I was way off about you, then.”

“To be fair, you often are.”

John laughs, shakes his head, looks at the ceiling. Sherlock takes the joint from where John holds it, dangling from the side of the couch, and takes a hit as if to steel himself for he wants to say. “Listen,” he starts through a lungful of smoke, inelegant. “I understand if you want to move. Once you’re well.”

“Shut it,” John says, unconcerned, running a hand over Sherlock’s hair lazily. “Idiot. You don’t want me to go.”

“That’s absolutely not the point. I want you to be safe.”

“Idiot,” John repeats, unknowingly sending electricity through Sherlock with the movement of his fingers. Sherlock leans against the couch, like a pet at his feet, and looks up at him. “I’m safe. And you saved me. And I know all I do right now is complain, and ask you to do things for me, and thank you far too little, but you’ve been amazing, Sherlock. I know it’s not typical flatmate stuff.”

Sherlock nods once, loses all resolve to press the issue-- which is easy to do, when arguing for something that makes his head spin with loss at even the thought of it. He offers the joint back to John silently, reluctantly, knowing he’ll move his hand from where it has settled. John curls his fingers slightly, his nails at the skin of his hairline, then takes it.

They sit in silence for a while. When he moves his head, Sherlock starts to feel the slight stutter of the marijuana’s effect on him, a sensation of time delay, as if he’s moving a split second behind reality. John has relaxed, and only in its absence Sherlock realises how he had been holding himself before, cautious and tense with pain. Before he’s entirely conscious of his action, Sherlock is touching the hem of John’s sweater, lifting it to see the dressing over the wound at his side.

“I hope you don’t scar,” he says. He thinks he hears a soft intake of John’s breath but is unsure, more focussed on following the topography of his skin to the compromised territory of the covered wound.

“It’ll make me look tough,” John says, and Sherlock glances up, tracing the outline of the medical tape around the gauze, barely touching.

“It’ll make you look like you had appendicitis.”

John laughs slightly; Sherlock can see his stomach rise and fall with it. He covers it gently with his sweater again, leans his head against the edge of the couch cushion to look up at his face. He feels slightly freer to do so, with a built-in excuse if he crosses the line. John says nothing, tips his head back to exhale, then twists to tap the ash in a pot plant on the side table.

“So, what have you been coming down from?”

“What?”

“When you smoke during your comedown, what are you on?”

Sherlock shakes his head, setting the ashtray on the floor, tapping ash into it. “Nothing anymore.”

“Interesting...” John says, smoothes his hand over Sherlock’s hair again. Sherlock has to give him credit, knows exactly what he’s up to, but has long abandoned any will to resist. He rests his head against John’s thigh, closes his eyes as he feels his fingertips stroke along his part, sinking slowly into the mass of his hair. He’s never sure of the appropriate physical boundaries between friends, but decides if he stays still, John will skirt enough around them. He's tracing small patterns in his hair, and Sherlock feels as though he can sense every strand being dislodged with a small run of pleasure. He knows John is kneading him into something more pliable, biding his time before pressing: “Nothing anymore?”

“Mostly,” Sherlock says, and John rewards him with a slow sweep of his hand.

“What was it previously?”

Sherlock opens his heavy eyes to see John, narrowing them in what he hopes is an offputting expression. John smiles, brushes hair from his forehead with the back of his index finger, his gaze steady, comforting. Sherlock could punch him, if he wasn't a boneless heap at this particular moment. “A few things. Cocaine.”

“I’ve never done coke,” John says, idly, and Sherlock closes his eyes again.

“You should. It’s wonderful.” Sherlock’s voice came rougher than he intended. John is tracing Sherlock’s hairline, behind the back of his ear.

“I’ve never seen you--”

“I’m technically in recovery,” Sherlock says as John trails off. He immediately regrets it when John removes his hand and shifts to sit up.

“Are you serious?”

Sherlock blinks slowly at him. “What?”

“You had a serious problem?” John asks-- he seems angry, Sherlock’s not entirely certain why. He’s distracted momentarily by the flash of pain on John’s face as he twists, too fast for his stitches, to stab the joint out in the potted begonia on the side table.

“I think they’d say _have_. Have a serious problem. Recovery is a journey, one day at a time, addiction only sleeps... and so on,” Sherlock says, in a slightly masochistic jab at digging himself deeper. He sees John’s expression darken, and finding it somehow unbearable, he turns away to roll a cigarette.

“What the fuck are you doing, then, Sherlock? Buying this, that’s-- you shouldn’t be... why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d react badly,” Sherlock says. “I’m not going to fall off the wagon because there’s some marijuana in the flat. _Medicinal_."

“That’s not the point. You saw your dealer.”

Sherlock looks up at John in surprise. He wants to say _nicely done_ , impressed that John extrapolated knowledge of his habits to this, deduced he would return like a homing pigeon to the same dealer the way he returns to the same restaurant, the same brand of shoes, the same toothpaste.

“Are you actually trying to fuck up?” John says, harshly, before Sherlock can word the complement appropriately. He realises now he’s tripped a land mine. _Harry._

He lights up, silent and contrite. He is amazed the one person in his life without first hand experience of his habit is the angriest of them all. A quiet part of himself says, _because he doesn’t know how good you are when you use. How blazingly fast. How easy. How bright._

“What can I say, John?” John’s expression has changed to something he can’t quite place.

“How long ago?” he asks.

Sherlock nods, taps ash. Full disclosure. “I got out of inpatient about a year ago.”

“You were actually... you were in rehab, proper rehab,” John says, incredulous. “Sherlock...”

“Not by choice,” Sherlock says, as if that makes it better, and John’s eyebrows knit. Sherlock backtracks. “Point being, I’m pretty much completely fine now.”

“That’s a lot of qualifiers for a very short sentence.”

Sherlock laughs slightly, rubs his forehead with his cigarette between his fingers, leans back on his palm. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had that feeling of just having something that’s just right for you. Something that just fills in all the cracks, but that’s what it’s like for me. Apparently I’m not supposed to romanticise using, but in my case it’s fact,” Sherlock says, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. “I find it hard, a lot of the time. You know this about me. It’s like I oscillate at the wrong frequency, and using just turns something on, or something off... does something. And fixes it.” He licks his lips, glances up at John. “So I’m as fine as I can be without it.”

John’s expression has softened. “I’m happy you got help.”

Sherlock nods once, frowns and looks down. He stabs out his cigarette. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not...” _Not like your sister,_ he thinks, then laughs slightly at himself, thinks back to the recovery groups in the ivy-league centre Mycroft shipped him off to. The _health spa_. The patients a blur of boat shoes and tasteful pearl earrings, faintly recognisable last names, bedraggled in a way almost invisible to the naked eye. Everyone swearing up and down they’re not junkies, not really. Not like these people. “I’m not going to use anymore.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” John says, quiet in a way that makes Sherlock ache to be close to him again. He doesn’t know exactly what to do with himself, casts his eyes around the room as the silence stretches out between them-- not exactly uncomfortably, but noticeably.

“Will you tell me about it?” John asks, out of nowhere, and Sherlock looks back at him. Pauses.

“What do you want to know?”

“Just... what happened,” John says. He starts to pull the throw rug over himself and Sherlock leans to help, smoothes it out over his legs.

“It was just that it got out of hand. I actually see it now. I was writing, I had this advance that would sustain me forever, I thought. And I thought as long as I was writing, then I was functioning, and whatever I did, whatever I took was fine.” Sherlock shrugs, leans against the couch again. “Then my brother came by, one day, when I was really strung out. I’d been up for days, just working, not eating, and he took one look at me and gave me an ultimatum. I didn’t think anything of it. But then I got a bad batch, had a reaction, or maybe overdosed, I can’t really remember that part. All I know is that he knew about it, and somehow I was in hospital, and then in detox, then in rehab. For about four months. And then I came back here, my savings gone... so that's when I started taking cases again. And why you're here, I suppose.”

John had half-curled on the couch, his bad hand tucked against his chest, watching Sherlock. “How did he know?”

“Mycroft? He had the place bugged.”

John starts to laugh, but trails off abruptly as Sherlock looks up at him.

“You haven’t met him yet,” Sherlock says, as if that was an adequate explanation. He decides that particular topic is better left to another time, and moves to stand. He’s not entirely steady on his feet. “You should eat. Sandwich?”

“I can’t get used to you making me food,” John says quietly, looking up at him. Sherlock isn’t sure how to reply at first, just nods slightly. The silence draws out.

"I'm capable of assembling a sandwich." _Just not buying the ingredients, apparently._ "What do you think I did before you got here?"

"Blood of virgins, if I had to guess," John murmurs. He reaches for Sherlock's hand, strokes his fingertips along his palm, as if to still him there. Sherlock allows his gaze to turn hungry in a way he’s usually able to rein in, just looks. John’s eyes are heavy-littled, his hair a wreck from sleep. He hasn’t cut it in a while-- low on his list of priorities, considering-- and the length suits him. His sweater is too big. When they first met, Sherlock had wondered if he had recently lost a significant amount of weight, but all his new acquisitions seem to be similarly oversized. It also suits him, he concludes, as he always does, with John. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have known it, that his breath could be taken by the the faint curve of a back, almost hidden under a mountain of knitted wool.

John’s fingers are at Sherlock’s wrist, and Sherlock can’t think of appropriate words that will pull the moment back into neutral territory. He feels the urge to be flippant with him, to move away. Instead, with no prior thought, he realises he’s leaning to him, bracing an arm against the arm of the couch and brushing a kiss to his forehead. The scent of his hair holds him there longer than he intended. John is still and silent for a moment, then touches Sherlock’s shoulder, his neck. His nose brushes against Sherlock’s cheek, his breath warm against his jaw, something about the gesture unbearably gentle. Sherlock can’t think, closes his eyes to gather himself. John is stroking his hair again, slow, languid, and then, as if he shared the same thought at the same moment, moves to give Sherlock space to lie next to him. Sherlock folds himself in, cautious of his injuries, lets John cover him with the throw.

“Sorry,” John says, finally, his voice quiet. “Smoking makes me a bit like this.”

John is intensely warm, and Sherlock wishes his body was safe to bury himself against. John lifts Sherlock’s arm and drapes it over his chest, rests his good hand on it.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks, moving his fingers slow along his wrist, over his forearm. Sherlock laughs slightly.

“Yes.”

John seems to reconsider, makes a small sound and turns his head to Sherlock, rests his forehead to his shoulder. “What did you buy me? This stuff is for real...”

“That’s your question?” Sherlock laughs slightly, but he understands what John is doing, building in an excuse before he crosses the line. They’re buzzed, not themselves, they can sweep it under the rug in the morning. He’s grateful for this, for John’s ability to build in boundaries, escape plans, in a way he could never work out himself.

“Sod off. My question is... in your books,” John starts, his voice slightly muffled by Sherlock’s jumper. “In your books, your characters, they’re like you. I mean, not in a lot of ways, obviously, but I didn’t realise, when I first met you. When I first met you, I wondered where it all came from, because I thought you were so... so closed off. I hope that doesn’t sound mean.” Sherlock shakes his head slightly, unconcerned. He knows what John is building to.

“Just ask it,” he says quietly, turning his head to breathe into John’s hair, closes his eyes.

“Well,” John starts, hesitates, and Sherlock doesn’t press, has become accustomed to John being terminally incapable of ever getting to his point. “If I was talking about myself, I’d be a four. A Kinsey four, I mean.”

“I know.” Sherlock smiles slightly. “I like you used the scale.”

“Where are you? On the scale.” John seems to grow warmer against him; Sherlock wonders if he is imagining it.

“I’m not sure if there’s a number for me.” Sherlock, pauses thinks. “Six, with a gun to my head. I'm rarely attracted to people. Interested. In that way."

“Six, with reservations.” John nods slightly against Sherlock. “Would you say you’re... I mean--”

“Not asexual.”

“Oh.”

“That said, most of my experiences in the past have been... not...” Sherlock looks up at the ceiling, loses himself for a moment in the honey-slow movement of John’s fingers along his arm. He struggles for the best way to convey the reality of his sexual experience, which to him feels merely like a handful of moments shot through a dark sea of half-remembered nights. When the sex could be drowned out by pleasure of another sort. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever really slept with anyone while sober.”

“Ever?” John asks, his voice almost a whisper, as if they were sharing a confidence of grave importance. Sherlock laughs, can’t help himself.

“I can’t imagine anything more dull.”

“Oh, come on,” John mumbles, shifts onto his side slightly. “That can’t be true.”

Sherlock pauses. It’s not entirely true, but the sense that there is something he shouldn't disclose presents itself to him urgently through the haze. He feels faintly ridiculous for having said out loud what, until a few months ago, was a fundamental assumption in his life: the fact that desire for him was something that could only stir itself awake under the cover of a narcotic, that he was bored, actually bored with the matter while sober. He understood what attraction must mean intellectually, felt he had internalised the various cultural standards of beauty enough to appreciate it when he saw it, but he had never truly understood until John crawled under his skin. Never felt as though he had been grabbed by the scuff of his neck and shaken with the force of it until him. John with his neck bowed over a book at his desk, hair catching the redshifted afternoon light. John at a party, unconcernedly scruffy, flushed with wine and laughing at a joke Sherlock couldn’t quite appreciate. John standing solid and deep in thought with him at the scene of a crime. John now, tucked against him, eyes half-closed, hand resting on Sherlock’s arm.

Instead, he says, “Maybe you should sleep.”

“But this just got interesting,” John complains, looks up at Sherlock through his lashes. Sherlock raises his eyebrows.

“What should I say to appease you?”

“Are you saying you just don’t think about sex?”

“When I’m writing. When it impacts on a case.”

John grins wide enough to show his canines, shifts slightly against Sherlock. “You’ve never thought about me, _six_?”

 _Enough it would unsettle you_ , Sherlock thinks, but shakes his head instead.


	4. Chapter 4

John's hospitalisation turns out to be one of the more dramatic events to happen in his department's recent history. As such, he's quickly inundated with concern, gossip, followups about whether he had heard the gossip and if so to ignore it, and, lastly, at the pinnacle of ridiculousness, reports about how the reports of gossip have been exaggerated and _no one is talking about you that much, darling, so just focus on getting better_. The cumulative effect of this interest results in him taking longer than he should have to return, preferring to hang instead to the periphery, focussing, at least in theory, on his research, rather than on the same old scramble for tutoring work for the following semester, the research meetings, the confirmation seminars.

He spends his morning attempting to track down a potentially useful biographical chapbook he had found cited once in the index of another book and, upon further investigation, apparently nowhere else since. Although he knows it's the kind of busywork that will amount to little more than to disguise the putting-off of more pressing tasks-- the hard, overdue slog of a chapter draft he needs for a meeting with his supervisor, for example-- the pleasure of the chase has been enough to buoy his mood, which he supposes must be worth something.

He's sorting through a box of undigitised catalogue records he had requested from an archive in Germany, chasing a lead that suggests at least a portion of the text had been republished in a larger anthology under a slightly altered title. As he searches, he switches the desk lamp on at his station. Rain clouds are rolling in outside, and the sunlight that had been filtering through the high windows beside him fades, loses to the golden incandescent lamps surrounding him. The atmosphere makes him nostalgic, somehow; to be cocooned in a warm, quiet library, surrounded by scruffily-tracksuited and spectacled undergraduates, hunched anxiously over the same texts he, too, had been pouring over not so long ago.

He only becomes aware of the silence once a familiar voice breaks it, causing a ripple of irritation to pass over the surrounding desks. The students glance pointedly up over their glasses and laptop screens at Sherlock, who is crossing the reading area towards him, and then, once they seem to intuit that John is the intended target, at him as well.

"How did you find me?" John whispers, propping up a book as if it were able to block the sound of their voices. "We can't talk in here."

"Yes, but listen--" Sherlock continues on as though completely oblivious to the glares, so that all John can do is take hold of his coat sleeve and lead him out. He grabs Sherlock's shoulder and orients him demonstrably to see the sign reading _QUIET ZONE_ as they pass.

"I'm working," he says as they make it outside, tugging his sweater sleeves over his hands. The afternoon sky is dark, the air sweet with the smell of approaching rain, and the wind quickly strips him of all the warmth he had gained from the library's heating.

"I need you to correct the notes from the Jennifer Holly case, I've figured it out." Sherlock keeps talking as though he is only distantly present, like his mind is spinning off in two different directions. He lets John lead him away from the library entrance to an area sheltered by heavily-growing oak trees, now deserted in the threatening weather.

"I've showed you how to edit my files." John slumps to sit on a stone bench, his mind elsewhere, as well, as he tries to mentally bookmark his interrupted train of thought.

He can't remember the first time he had started taking notes on Sherlock's cases, only that, as someone who spends much of his day relying on records made by others, it came like second nature to him. Eventually his role had been upgraded from interloper to something more official, or at least expected, with Sherlock starting to dictate to him addendums, clarifications, and John finds it heartening to have a reason to be alongside him, notepad in hand. While the notes may not be of direct use to Sherlock-- there's no need for a supplement to his memory-- their usefulness becomes apparent as evidence of that astuteness when challenged by a third party, and as an archive, which pleases John. It had been only upon Sherlock's further scrutiny and amusement that he realised his other motive: a kind of attempt to demystify through documentation those thought processes that had seemed like something close to magic when he had first met him.

"Besides, if you've worked it out, go tell the client and you're done... Sherlock, are you listening?"

Sherlock is pacing, clearly excited by something. "Yes, but John, the guitar-- it wasn't out of tune, well, it was out of tune, but has been deliberately set to a non-standard tuning _before_ going out of tune, do you see?" John stays silent, slouched against the wind, eying Sherlock's thick coat pointedly. Sherlock pays no notice. "When we examined the guitar, the tuning was by ear roughly C-G-D-G#-D#, with the first string broken, yes? Which lead me at the time to conclude, when taking into consideration how far from the standard E-A-D-G-B-E it was, that there has been some kind of uneven trauma or pressure to the tuning pegs, as opposed to the predictable process of detuning due to humidity, temperature and so on. Possibly it was knocked over in a struggle, which is interesting but not that revealing-- but think, John, taking into consideration the fact that the high strings detune more quickly than the thicker strings, the twenty-four hours that had passed since the robbery and our arrival, _what if_ the original tuning was actually C-G-D-A-E?"

"What if," John repeats dryly, feigning disinterest, as if it would in any way deter Sherlock from interrupting him like this in the future. It's not as if it doesn't warm him on some level, Sherlock coming to him under the flimsiest of premises with his discoveries, like a cat with a bird in its mouth.

"I'll rephrase, what if, to extrapolate the pattern to the broken string, what if the tuning was in fact C-G-D-A-E- _B_?" John gives Sherlock a pained look. "Don't you-- the intervals, John."

"Intervals of what?"

"The intervals between each string is a perfect fifth."

"Okay."

Sherlock looks exasperated. "John. Do you know what similar instrument is tuned to perfect fifths?"

It's then that John catches up, like a light switch being turned on. "Not... the mandolin?" Sherlock grins at him in a way that makes him forget the cold. "So our musician was in her room after all. Messed about with her guitar--"

"Perhaps thinking of serenading her with a song--"

"And lied about being there." John shakes his head.

"It accounts for the broken string, too-- the tuning is too high for the nylon strings she had on it, and the first string is the most likely to break. No scuffle required. It was a crime of opportunity, nothing much more."

John shakes his head as he looks down, smiles despite himself. "Good job. One less folk band member terrorising the streets."

Sherlock seems to settle into his own skin again, like something has worked its way out of his system. When John meets his eyes, Sherlock looks back at him as if he were seeing him for the first time today.

"You're cold."

"I should go back in." John pushes himself to his feet. His side gives a small, residual ache, faint enough to make him wonder whether he feels it merely out of some kind of habit.

"Don't--" Sherlock starts, and before John can refuse he's shrugging off his coat, setting it on John's shoulders. John opens his mouth to protest, but the sound dies in his throat as Sherlock smoothes his hands along his arms, as if admiring his handiwork. "Take a break."

"Why," John sighs, in a tone that makes it clear it isn't a real question, something more of a ritual protestation. He isn't sure why they do it, but it has become so ingrained that John barely thinks of it, the demurring, creating excuses for wanting to be in each others' company. John is more invested in it, even he can see that clearly enough-- but on the other hand, he has it worse. He can see their relationship in ways that Sherlock is, for some reason, unable to. He doesn't know how Sherlock, who is insightful to the point of being clinical about others' relationships, their motivations, can maintain such a blind spot when it comes to theirs, and to John's feelings.

John has wondered at times if Sherlock has ever really had a platonic friend, a point of reference for how far from there they've drifted. A number of times they've run into men who must have dropped off Sherlock’s radar post-sobriety, who look delighted to see him, approaching him looking like they want to eat him up where he stands. Sherlock’s usual response is a kind of distanced confusion, even as they introduce themselves winkingly to John as _a good friend of Sherlock’s_. There is something a little sad, a little fascinating, about what those strangers seem to suggest about the person he was, and this cluelessness on Sherlock's part is something John feels as though he has to restrain himself from exploiting. For a time, John's injury was a good enough excuse for him to barrel past Sherlock's indifference, and the pleasure he derived from the slight possessiveness Sherlock began to take towards his body-- buttoning a coat for him, _it's quicker this way_ , gathering him to lean on his shoulder when walking pulled at his stitches-- makes him almost miss it, now that the memory of the pain has faded.

Sherlock lingers close, still, and John can see how they would look to anyone passing. He ducks his head, it's too much, sometimes, and shifts on his feet. "How did you know? About the fifths."

"You tune the violin the same way." A surprisingly modest answer; he could have easily launched into a spiel about the importance of developing one's general knowledge, _no excuse for ignorance, John_. But something has shifted, since-- when, exactly? When they fell asleep on the couch together, that time? What he thinks of as the almost kiss, and the almost disaster. It could have ruined everything, he knows, if Sherlock hadn't reeled it all back in, withdrawing somewhere into a battered paperback that had barely left his hands the next day, leaving John adrift and faintly bruised, faintly relieved.

John adjusts the coat around his shoulders, Sherlock's scent, tobacco and soap, and the residual body heat settling him. The books feel far away, all of a sudden, and this effect Sherlock has must be partially why John has postponed a second meeting with his supervisor, now. His feelings aside, when he thinks about it he isn't surprised that it's easier to be compelled by the present, by the _let's go, John, a priceless hierloom is missing and they suspect the deceased's twin_ , than by the past that had waited this long for his attention, after all, and surely can wait a few more hours.

"You need to go and work on that proposal," John says after a moment of silence, resettling on the bench, tugging the coat around him.

"You need to write your draft." Sherlock sits beside John.

"We could go home," John starts, glancing at him. "Make some coffee. Get some takeout. Mutual reinforcement, you know-- two men enter, two drafts leave." He realises Sherlock himself must be cold, now, and without thinking he leans into him, as if to redistribute the warmth somehow. He can feel Sherlock tense, but he doesn't pull away, not yet, and although John can't meet his eyes, he stays as well.

 

* * *

 

"What's another word for unfortunately? Without-- you know, without too much personal inflection."

"Leave it out. Useless word."

John glances over his shoulder at Sherlock. " _Unfortunately_ , I live with a real git," he mutters, and turns back to his laptop screen, his eyes glazing over at the sight of the document. Apparently Sherlock had needed little prompting to work, simply rolling up his shirt sleeves when they arrived home, dropping to sit at the desk in the living room and withdrawing immediately into some kind of private headspace. John, on the other hand, had to cast around for a good hour in an attempt to find an in on his own draft, which had grown almost impenetrable in its untidiness, like an overgrown thicket of weeds.

"This is my point, though, John: _I live with a real git_ is unlikely to be read as a fortunate occurrence, so why specifically flag it?" Sherlock's typing barely slows as he speaks, a cigarette burning down in the ashtray on the desk beside him.

John rolls his eyes silently, stretching his legs out from where he sits on the floor, dislodging the semi-circle of books surrounding him. "And, _unfortunately_ , he thinks he's Hemmingway..." He trails off when his phone sounds out from his pocket, and he shifts to dig it out.

> _Hi, J._
> 
> _I know you probably won't be happy to hear from me. I'm sorry. It's late here... it's late there, too, I know. We're not as far away as I think we are sometimes. I shouldn't be sending this, but I saw Annie tonight, and I was thinking about you. And I wanted to know how you were doing. Where you are, even. Back home in London still? Sometimes I feel like I catch a glimpse of you, like I used to-- you know, waiting for the U-bahn down in Hermannplatz, stuff like that. Well, this is a lot of words for I miss you._  
>  _R_

John stares at the screen until it dims, then shuts off. He's faintly aware that Sherlock has stopped typing, but he can't seem to process any information beyond the email. For a second he has the wild idea he had imagined it, but when he turns the screen on its still there, waiting for him to deal with. Without thinking he deletes it, then immediately goes to the trash folder and replies.

> _What do you want?_

As soon as the _sent mail_ sound chimes he regrets it, pushes his phone aside with less conviction than he would have liked. He moves to his feet, sensing Sherlock's eyes on him, and heads into the kitchen. As the kettle boils he can hear his phone beep again.

"Message for you," Sherlock calls out, significantly.

"Message for you: shut it," John calls back, pulling a mug down and dropping a teabag in. It feels strange not to offer one to Sherlock, deviant somehow, but he half-suspects him of having the ability to decipher something from it-- in the strength of the brew, maybe, or in the tea leaves themselves. He holds out long enough for the tea to seep, then casts the bag into the bin and charges back to his phone, spilling hot water on his hand as he goes.

> _Nothing. Just, hi._

John toys with the idea of telling him he's got the wrong person, but realises it doesn't quite work that way with email. Instead he sinks back down in front of his laptop and takes a scalding sip of tea, the faint pain from the burn on his hand and his tongue combining to send him into a quiet kind of irritated anger.

> _You don't get to say hi to me._

"Bad news?" Sherlock asks, one arm draped over the back of his chair, his voice too sweet to be taken seriously,

"You could call him that," John mumbles. He thinks he sees a flicker of an eyebrow raise. "Just don't. Please."

"Don't what?"

"Don't scrutinise me. Just do your work." _Or come over here, like you did that night. Give me a reason to not care about this._

"This is my work."

"Your life's work, making fun of me." John blows on his tea, takes a long sip and sets the mug down. He picks up a book at random and flips from one bookmarked page to another, like a self-conscious pantomime of industriousness. 

"Observing you." Sherlock hasn't moved, his gaze interested, scrutinisng. 

"Well, don't," John says, dropping the book in his lap and looking up.

"Who was it?"

"Someone I knew in Berlin."

Sherlock seems placated by that, for some reason. He gives John one last narrow-eyed look and then turns back to his computer, and John takes it as his cue to escape. He closes his laptop, sets it on the coffee table and shifts to his feet, leaving the books where they lie.

"Going to bed."

"Goodnight," Sherlock says without turning around, his voice distant again, like he's drifted somewhere.

John lingers a second, not quite sure what he was expecting, or wanting. He nods, without Sherlock to see it, and heads up the stairs to his bedroom. After he changes he reconsiders, thinks for a moment and then goes half-way back down to see Sherlock. 

"Hey," he starts, then waits an interminably long time for Sherlock to stop typing and look up at him. When he does his courage withers a little, and he bites his lip, shrugging. "It's nice, well, it was nice-- I got work done, tonight, you're a good writing partner. Or, not a writing partner, exactly, but-- that was good, I think, and... I hope you're getting work done too. And that you get some sleep." He pauses, feeling almost embarrassed. "'Night."

Sherlock watches him in silence long enough to give John time to wonder what his point for coming down was, exactly. He swallows, can't quite manage a smile but gives a little, dismissive shake of his head, and turns to head back up the stairs again. He thinks for a second that he hears Sherlock say _goodnight_ again after him, but it comes too quiet, and too strangely-toned for him to be sure it wasn't just a creak of the stairs, or a voice from the street below. As he heads to his room, chastened, his phone chimes again in his hand. 

> _It's just that I'll be in London on Friday._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... I'm sorry

There is a stranger with John when Sherlock returns home, the air around them leaden. John is leaning back against the bench, his arms folded, taking longer than usual to respond to Sherlock's presence. The stranger is sitting at the kitchen table with a mug in front of him, and Sherlock feels the sudden impulse to claim it back, if only because it's the one John brings him, the one John knows he prefers. It feels as though Sherlock has interrupted something important, unpleasant, and the two are struggling to shake off the remnants of it.

The stranger has his back to Sherlock, but he can see the following: he has recently been on an airplane. American, grew up somewhere warm, with the kind of deeply-set tan that seems to linger with those who spent their childhoods in the sun. Coffee-drinker, dog-owner, non-smoker, has spent time working with his hands, but not recently. Sherlock can't put together anything novel, and he feels off-kilter with it.

"Alright?" John says to Sherlock, gives a half-smile. "Robert, this is my housemate, Sherlock. Sherlock, my friend Robert, from when I was in Berlin."

The stranger turns, and car alarms go off in Sherlock's mind. His face is instantly recognizable from where it has loomed over John's desk since the day he moved in. Sherlock has filed away the photograph: two figures and John are on a bridge over a canal. The stranger, _Robert_ , is grinning with his arm around John's shoulders. John is smiling, too, and seemingly drowning in a mountain of a scarf. His arm in turn is around the waist of a girl with a bottle green coat. She leans against John, looking away with a curious expression, as though she had heard her name called in the distance at the moment of the exposure.

Sherlock's first instinct is to leave, immediately, and retrieve the photo, study it in light of new information. Instead he nods once at Robert, and at John's wary glare he knows not to mention it, knows it's now hidden away, lest the guest come across it.

"It's alright if Robert stays on the couch tonight?" John asks. He's chewing his lip. "He, uh, didn't have anywhere lined up, or something, I suppose." The last half of that sentence is clearly directed at Robert, who frowns.

"I came to see you," he says to John, low, not for Sherlock's ears, and Sherlock knows when it suits his purposes to make himself invisible. He drifts into the living room, ears pricked up, and busies himself at the bookcase.

"You could have asked. You could have given me some warning," John is saying. "Proper warning, not that stupid text message--"

"I told you, J, was a spur of the moment thing..."

"I'm supposed to believe that you, what, you raced up to see me because suddenly it's all too much to bear?"

"Is that so farfetched?"

"I'm telling you it is." There's a creak of a chair being pushed back, a silence that draws out long. Sherlock realises he's holding his breath to listen, makes out a small _don't_ that comes like a sigh, then nothing. He's close to going back into the kitchen, can't stand it, but it comes again, more pronounced, _don't_ , definitely from John. It's quiet, and still, for a long time. Sherlock flips a page of the book in front of him-- a completely inadequate cover for eavesdropping, he knows, but a gesture, at least.

"I'm gonna go find a hotel. Okay? I'll go, and you can think, and just... just call me. It doesn't have to be anything."

"Okay," John says quietly. Their voices have both softened. "A hotel's a good idea. You can't-- we can't just--"

"I know. You're not my boyfriend again just because I want you to be-- that's how you said it, right?"

"Something like that."

They're quiet again, and Sherlock takes this as a cue to slip away. The afternoon, too, is quiet outside, still in its lull between the end of work hours and the night coming into its own. Soon voices will begin to rise again from the street below, but now it feels to Sherlock as if the city is drawing into itself as if to take a breath. He turns lamps on as he crosses the room, hears them discussing the luggage by the front door, then the door itself, opening and closing.

"Sherlock," John calls, startling him as he is closing his own bedroom door. Something close to guilt twists in him, and he takes a moment to reply.

"In my room."

"In the kitchen." 

Sherlock obeys to find John crouched at at a low cupboard, rummaging. 

"You've got something stashed somewhere, don't you?" 

Sherlock frowns. "You're not interested in what I have stashed." 

John looks up fiercely at that, once hand resting on the cupboard door. "That better be a joke."

"Sure," Sherlock says, vaguely. "There's whiskey."

"Since when do you drink whiskey?"

"And some benzodiazepine..." Sherlock goes on, watching John's face for a reaction. 

"Since when do you take benzos?"

"You understand that if they're still here I don't take them, don't you? That's how addicts work, we don't leave our good stuff laying about to gather dust."

Johns rests his head against the cupboard door, eyes closed. "Where's the whiskey?" he asks finally.

"I'll get you a Xanax--"

"Let's start on liquids," John says, hauling himself up and out to the couch as Sherlock retrieves the bottle from his desk drawer. When he passes, John makes a lunge for it that Sherlock dodges with a disapproving shake of the head. He heads into the kitchen instead, dropping ice into two glasses and carrying them back to him.

"You realise we're undertaking an emergency procedure," John says as Sherlock pours. He straightens from his slouch, tucked cross-legged as he accepts the glass. "No need for affectations."

"You start drinking from the bottle, then that's the kind of night you'll have." Sherlock sits next to John with his own glass, poured more out of a reason to linger than in for any desire for the contents. John throws his drink back and leans forward to pour himself another.

"That's some quality folk wisdom there, Holmes. Did you get that in rehab?"

"I'd really recommend something in pill form if you're going to be such a pest." 

John slouches, draws his knees to his chest in a way that causes Sherlock to have a moment of panic at the prospect of John showing excessive emotion. He stares at him with an expression he isn't able to clamp down into neutrality, until John diffuses that bomb with a small laugh, a quick shake of the head.

"So, how much have you deduced so far?"

Sherlock nods slightly, swirls his ice in his glass. "Some."

"Come on, open invitation to show off."

"There's no point telling you what you already know," Sherlock says quietly. He leans forward to pick up the bottle, refilling John's glass. He's starting to recognise this impulse now, this skewed idea of what looking after him entails. John drinks, he refills, and eventually the situation devolves to something Sherlock can only consider to be a backfiring of his intentions. John, now considerably drunk, phone in hand, disappears into the night, and doesn't return until the next day, looking mysteriously worse for wear. It's that afternoon that Sherlock catches his own reflection, glowering like some lukewarm Montoni, and decides his best plausible cover is to appear busy working, high-minded, and _frankly, John, a little irritated by some of the more base impulses driving certain members of the household when we have our work to do, in case you forgot_. 

As he hunches over his laptop, at what John calls "our desk" by the window in the living room, he realises the ridiculousness of his efforts to appear uninterested. John wafts about the flat, a song clearly in his heart as he cleans, and it's as if Sherlock isn't there at all. The purpose of this, the "straightening up", Sherlock understands only as the door buzzes and John scampers to answer. That he is blindsighted by this is evidence either of the extent of Sherlock's misery and distraction, or otherwise the unprecedented callousness of John's actions-- the former of which he knows to be true, and the latter of which he prefers. 

While Sherlock thinks this, his hands are moving of their own accord at the computer, and when his eyes refocus on the screen and he half-expects to see the beginnings of an _all work and no play_ , winter at the Overlook situation. John is in the kitchen clearly being romanced by Robert, who has swept in like a draft of cold air. Sherlock wishes he couldn't tell that he comes (uneasily) from (old) money; it would be easier otherwise to suspect him of using trusting John as a bed and breakfast. They're at the kitchen table, heads bowed together, laughing at something Sherlock shudders to imagine. The suitcase from the day before has made a reappearance on the floor by Robert's feet, which causes him to fear the worst, and it's at this point Sherlock closes his laptop and messages Mycroft.

He reveals his plan to John the following morning. The balancing act is a delicate one; he feels he needs to maintain a sense of neutrality to his announcement, which is that he needs to work on a proposal, one that is required to be submitted to his publisher as soon as possible. The difficult part is to not let the smallest amount of the jealousy, which overnight has come to him like a physical illness, infect his words or actions. He feels it of crucial importance that John remain unaware of the facts of the situation: that, for a number of months he has been storing small pieces of what he believed to be evidence John's feelings for him in a kind of mental system directory, evidence that in the light of this new turn of events needs urgent reassessment and reclassification for the sake of his own mental well-being and sobriety.

This in mind, he presents himself full-dressed to the happy duo, with a duffel bag in one hand that he ostentatiously leaves by the door. 

"I have to go away for a couple of days," he tells John as he enters the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the French press that sits steaming between the two. He addresses this only to John, who perks up.

"Has something come up?" 

"In a way. Since the preferred holiday house is now vacant I'm going down to write." The holiday house is preferred by no one, of course-- one more remnant of the tastes of long-departed relatives that cling like barnacles to the hulking vessel that is the Holmes family lineage. The house is by its very nature outside of London, the first strike against it. The second strike is that it is by the ocean, the worst environment possible for a family who burn as though they are missing a few crucial layers of epidermis, and who have a tendancy to lumber, fully dressed and shod in closed footwear, along the seaside as unsteady and bewildered as if they had freshly woken from a coma to find themselves deposited there. Nonetheless, it is available and accessible, and he partially hopes the sun-warmed cheerfulness of the town will be of some comfort, not by lifting his mood, but by giving him something inconsequential to rail against. The two are watching him with new interest, and Sherlock realises in that moment that he has a problem on his hands.

"You have a holiday house?" John asks.

"Not me personally..."

"Where?"

"Nowhere of interest," Sherlock says, vaguely, and sips his coffee.

"Can we come?" Robert asks, with an excited grin and unfathomable tactlessness.

"It's a glorified beach hut--" Sherlock says, realising a beat too late his terrible error.

"It's near the sea?" John looks positively radioactive with interest. "Sherlock, how are you getting there?"

Sherlock is momentarily blindsighted by this, cuts himself off before he answers _taxi_. He has only been to the property under extreme duress and escorted by Mycroft. "Train. I'll have to get a rental car in town," he guesses, covering his uncertainty with a dismissive flick of his head.

"You can't go alone."

"I can."

"Sherlock, you can't, you need company," John says earnestly. Sherlock is beginning to seriously question John's mental state. He stares him down until John realises his error and reconsiders his tactic. "Please?" This works better for him, Sherlock feels his resolve momentarily slacken, until his field of vision widens to take in Robert again.

"I have to work."

"We can help, we can do the grocery runs, and... barbecue," Robert says. They both are being nauseatingly sweet, beaming up at him like children begging to go to Disneyland. That said, John has a point, in theory. Sherlock is less than confident in his car-hiring abilities-- in fact, he's unsure if his drivers license is still valid. 

"I'm leaving soon," he starts, and at that they leap to action, throwing back cups of coffee and positively dashing away to pack, leaving Sherlock defeated where he stands. 

\--

When they arrive at the house the sky has gone grey and smooth as a pebble. As much as it pleases Sherlock to see a spanner in their afternoon plans, the complaining, which started the second they set foot in town, threatens to brings on a migrane.

"The water may be warm," he suggests to them without much conviction, as he sets up his laptop with the kind of care and attention that he hopes suggests a man really settling in to his work. They look unconvinced, and start back up on the speculation, checking weather forecasts on matching smartphones, offering amateur meteorological predictions, which always conclude in the inevitability of unending sunshine and an unseasonal heatwave any minute now.

The other topic for discussion is what apparently is the unimaginable grandeur of the Holmes family holiday house. The two behave as if they have never seen a fireplace before, practically swooning with pleasure at each new discovery. Sherlock has to admit that Mycroft's renovations were not unsuccessful; the house is large, airy where it needs to be, cosy where it needs be. It has become gently modern, dark wood and careful lighting making it seem in the evenings warmly self-contained, sheltering the occupants against the wilder elements outside. The house itself sits close to the water, built before further development was banned in the area, which makes it somewhat luxurious in its isolation. 

John and Robert are dressed as if they are aiming to embody the platonic ideal of beachgoers everywhere; he half-expects them to produce a plastic bucket and pail from their bags. To Sherlock's eye John is adorable, in breton stripes and canvas shoes. Robert, on the other hand, is wearing a billowing white shirt that Sherlock suspects, meanly, is probably chiffon. Sherlock himself is slightly confused by appropriate beachwear, and had dug out clothes he had bought when he needed to infiltrate yacht trip a number of years ago-- navy trousers, and what he believes are called boat shoes, which he must have bought blindly for their name at the time. _You look nice_ , John had said to him, quietly, on the train, which had buoyed him, just slightly. 

In fairness, after the weather-complaining and house-admiring dies down, the two keep their word with a trip into town that yields an alarming quantity of groceries. Sherlock asks them if they are planning to settle here permanently, which causes Robert to smile alarmingly at John and mumble something about _brokering no complaints_. 

Sherlock gets little work done in the first evening, after an elaborate meal cooked and eaten, an irresponsible amount of wine continually poured. John finds a DVD of a movie starring a certain Elvis Presely in town, and between the lit fire and bewildering musical numbers, Sherlock falls asleep. 

\---

John and Robert manage to avoid Sherlock the next morning; a turn of events he chooses to attribute to John's thoughtfulness, and assigns gratitude accordingly. When they return in the afternoon they are loud and single-minded-- their conversation, filtering in from the kitchen, seems to consist of the word _fish_ repeated with increasing levels of hysteria at each pass.

Later, Sherlock spots them engaged in something abnormal from the window by his desk, and when he opens it to lean out he can see that they appear to be desecrating the corpse of some kind of enormous sea-creature. 

"We have _fresh fish_ ," John calls out when he sees him, in the same tone one might use when having discovered an oil well. "Man we met at the main beach caught too many and traded it to us for some beer we had. What was it, Robert, three quid worth of beer? Three pounds for _all this fish_?" Sherlock wonders briefly if John has an iron deficiency. Intrinsically unsettled by such an unchecked level of enthusiasm, coupled with the presence of kitchen knives, Sherlock closes the window silently and returns to his desk.

The weather stays clear into the evening, and John and Robert have managed both to light a fire on the beach and to coax Sherlock out to see it. Their excitement unwaning, they drag coolers of beer on ice and a startling amount of food down, where the main event itself waits, the foil-wrapped fish on a grill over the fire. John looks about to pass out from anticipation, with a stick in hand to poke at the potatoes they have pushed into the coals. The light is still good, and occasionally his gaze breaks from the fish long enough to pick up his beaten-up Pentax, manually focussing on Sherlock, Robert, the fire and the beach itself in turn. Robert, who Sherlock begrudgingly suspects spearheaded the fire-building effort, is attemping to hook up a set of portable speakers to his iPod, the result of which Sherlock is dreading as surely as if it will bring with it physical pain. 

"Unknit your brow," John says to Sherlock, crouched in front of him with camera in hand. "Look more picturesque."

"This is just my face--" Sherlock starts to protest, but is cut off.

"I don't feel I have your cooperation in this at all, you know..."

"You definitely don't," Sherlock confirms. 

"Sherlock. There's beer, there's fish, there's a fire that we hand-made. Give me a photo I can look at when I'm old." Sherlock raises an eyebrow at John, silent for a moment, then leans forward to take the camera from him. 

"Look at the fish, and I'll take a photo of you experiencing true love."

"Brilliant," John says, in all seriousness, and they shift positions so that Sherlock can capture both John and the fire. As Sherlock looks through the viewfinder, he has the sudden and wonderful sensation of looking at John with complete freedom. John is sitting on his heels, facing the fire with an exaggerated expression of excitement that fades into something quieter as he waits for Sherlock to work out the controls, the wind blowing his hair forward slightly. His fine, smooth nape is exposed by the loose neck of his jumper, and the last rays of the sun catch in his eyelashes. Sherlock fires the shutter, winds the film, hands it back to John with something like a sense of loss. 

John reaches for the camera but doesn't take it, exactly, just puts his hand on it and looks at Sherlock with a curious, unreadable expression, as if he's on the verge of speaking. Sherlock feels himself holding his breath, the moment stretching untenably between them. At the instant it feels about to break, the speakers scream to life behind them, and Robert gives a whoop of triumph.

Sherlock expects the actual consumption of the fish to fall short of the hours of anticipation preceding it, but somehow John and Robert manage to keep the level of enthusiasm constant until it lies, a picked-clean carcass, on its foil with the sun entirely set. They make inroads into a surprisingly dense chocolate cake bought in town, and even Sherlock contributes to the effort on the beer. The cooking done, they build up the small fire again, and sit with the night wind from the ocean warm around them. John has usurped Robert as DJ, and somehow managed to placate everyone with Brian Wilson's _Smile_. _Beach Boys or the Beatles, the only things my family could agree to play on drives_ , he explains with a small laugh, the diplomat.

The unabashed romanticism of the night is enough to tip Sherlock from misery to something closer to a wretchedness, the kind he had thought only existed for the Humberts, the von Aschenbachs of this world. He suddenly thinks as though his feelings for John were symptoms of some kind of moral decline, as though he were lurking outside a window of a family sitting down to Christmas dinner. 

He pushes his hands into the sand, where the retained day's heat feels like something bodily. Robert thinks he hears his phone ringing from the house, something Sherlock finds highly improbable, considering the distance, but suddenly he's tramping unsteadily up the beach. John starts to pack the rubbish into an empty plastic bag, then scoots closer to Sherlock by the fire, sits next to him with his knees drawn to his chest.

"You okay?" he asks quietly, and at Sherlock's quizzical look he shrugs, looks into the fire. "You look like you're going to murder someone." Sherlock feels a rush of something like guilt, and shakes his head.

"I told you, it's just my face."

"I've spent a lot of time looking at your face," John says quietly, turning back to catch Sherlock's eyes. Sherlock takes an unsteady breath. "I know when something's bothering you."

Sherlock doesn't reply. Without realising it his head has bowed closer to John's, as if he exerts some faint magnetic force. He straightens up, shrugs.

"Can I talk to you about something you won't want to talk about?" John asks, suddenly, alarmingly. Sherlock barely knows how to form a reply. "It's not bad, I just know it's not your area of interest, but you're... you're the one I want to talk to."

 _You're my area of interest_ , Sherlock thinks. "Go ahead."

John hesitates, looks back towards the house, which is now lit up by Robert's movement inside. "I know you don't like him."

"I don't like stupid people."

"He's not stupid--" John protests, then trails off. "I've made a mistake."

"I can withhold judgement," Sherlock says quickly, anxious to hear whatever it is John's trying to say.

"Not about you," John laughs. "I've made a mistake with him. I should have slammed the door in his stupid face, now we're here... Christ, I'm such an idiot."

All Christmas and birthdays at once. Sherlock is momentarily stunned. "But..." he starts, not trusting himself with more, faintly aware he may be hallucinating. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why everything. Did you change your mind about him three minutes ago?"

"No. I don't know what I'm doing."

Sherlock acts without thinking, just reaches out and loops his arm around John's waist, easy as a breath, tugs him so John leans against his side. His sweater is thick, loose, but Sherlock can feel the faint sense of his bare hip underneath it as John sighs, settles his head against Sherlock's shoulder. 

"Why did you break up?"

"Thought you'd have the whole thing worked out by now," John says.

"I'm not psychic," Sherlock mumbles. _And I can't think about you with him without needing a drink._ The thought of gathering evidence, deducting, working all the possible angles over is enough to make Sherlock queasy.

"When we met, I was seeing someone else. Annie, who was his friend first and introduced us." _Green coat from the photo._ "And I guess I must have somehow known I was maybe bisexual before then, but he was the first guy who really-- it was out of nowhere. Anyway, when we hung out, the three of us, I was like a schoolboy, just desperate for him to notice me, and... well, long story short, Annie realised and dumped me, which is fair, but then I go off the deep end, not sleeping, textbook stuff." John glances at Sherlock with a quick, searching expression, almost cautious, as if he's afraid of being mocked. Sherlock nods a little, strokes his thumb as much as he dares along his side. "Well, finally he got a clue and we got together, but it's pretty clear from the start that it's just sex, which to me is _unacceptable_ , I'm still miserable.

"What's so stupid, though, is that, you've seen him, that's pretty much Robert. In my head, though, even after I left, I had somehow convinced myself there are all these hidden depths of, I don't know, of _something_ in him that he was actively holding back from me because I'm not-- you know, whatever it was that day, fill in the blank. So now he's here again, and even though it's different, I can't make myself say no... because he came for me, you know? He did one thing that a year ago I would have just... dropped dead with joy at."

Something about John’s story is off-- something he can’t put a name to, just yet, has set off alarms. He files it away. He turns his head to speak, but loses his words, huffs instead into his hair. "For someone so lovesick, you're very self-aware," he says, finally, and John laughs. 

"And embarrassed."

Sherlock's arm tightens around John, involuntarily, and he sees himself from the outside with a sudden rush of disgust, the calculating friend that swoops in like a vulture. But John's hair smells like sea water, and he has had too much to drink, and he can't move away.

"Well, this is when it gets really embarrassing, when I say that I guess I just projected onto him what I wanted. I suppose I wanted... I don't know, something more, so I invented it."

Sherlock nods slightly. This is something he suspected of John, a slight recklessness, a slight hunger, a slight masochism that he can only glimpse in him, as if he was seeing it through fogged glass. He wonders if John himself is fully aware of it, or if just he feels it, in quiet moments, like an ache in his teeth. Like Sherlock does. "Something consuming," he suggests, quietly, and he can feel John nod.

They sit silently, John seeming small all of a sudden, tucked against him. Robert returns, and John looks up at him, moving from Sherlock's side. 

"Robert, can we walk?"

They disappear down the beach, and for a while Sherlock sits, watching the fire grow low. One side of his body feels warmer than the other, as if he could mark out the areas of contact between them still. John had been breathing against Sherlock's shoulder, and he brushes the place with his fingers, as if the heat would still be there, lingering. 

After a time he stirs himself and starts to gather up the plastic cups, the paper plates. As the fire grows low his eyes adjust to the dark, and he sees the two by the water. The wind carries fragments of their voices back to him; he can hear Robert's voice steadily become sharper, more airborne. He wants to intervene at the sound of it, but instead he focuses on clearing the area calmly, thoroughly. 

He's closing the lid to the cooler when he hears the sand-softened footsteps behind him, and suddenly he is wrenched around by his shoulder. He can barely process the anger on Robert's face before his fist connects with his jaw, and he finds himself staggering back a step, pain setting him alight. He's barely aware of what has happened when Robert grabs a hold of his shirt to hold him in place as two more land, quickly, almost frenzied. Sherlock comes to his senses at that, pushes Robert off with his forearm against his windpipe, spits sudden blood in the sand. His lip is bleeding, as well as the inside of his cheek. He doesn't return the blows, just stands, fists clenched, watching him evenly and waiting for a move. The pain and the adrenaline are not unpleasant, in the moment they feel somehow redemptive. Robert is coughing, the impact to his throat must have winded him, and he has staggered back a few steps by the time John runs over and plants himself between them.

"What the _fuck_ , Robert," he says, loudly, his voice hoarse with anger. "What the fuck."

"What did you say to him, huh?" Robert says, trying to push past John, who shoves him back. "I knew you were a freak, but I didn't know you were a slimy bastard, too, what, you jealous he isn't interested? Threatened he likes getting fucked by someone who isn't creepy as hell? Trying to worm your way in?" Sherlock is surprised by the short laugh that comes from him, unannounced, but then John is moving faster than he has ever seen him, and grabs Robert by his collar roughly enough that they both stagger in the loose sand. Something flashes in Robert's eyes, and for a moment it looks like he'll hit John. Sherlock thinks wildly that if that happened he would probably have to kill him, or worse, but then everything ebbs and the only sign of life comes from John, who is speaking forcefully into Robert's face.

"You do _not_ speak to him like that," he spits. "And you sure as _hell_ do not disrespect me. Who do you think you are?"

"I think I'm the guy you stood out in the rain waiting for with your suitcase," Robert says, low, tries to surge against John's grip. "Waiting for me to change my mind."

"And you didn't," John says, evenly, Robert's attempt to humiliate him not seeming to land. "Which makes this your fault, not his, and not mine." He lets Robert go with a shove that sends him falling back on his heels. "Get the fuck out of here."

Robert springs to his feet and paces like a wolf. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

"So you walk."

Sherlock wipes his mouth with his sleeve, which comes back red. "It's an hour into town, go. Walk it off."

"Don't you fucking talk to me, you junkie-looking bastard," Robert snaps, charges towards Sherlock but abruptly backs off. "I see you looking at him, and what, you whisper in his ear about me, and now he's free again for you to jerk off over, guilt-free? You think you have a chance? I only have to look at him and he's on his knees--"

He's interrupted by a solid, clean hook to the jaw from John that knocks him off balance. Sherlock takes a few steps towards him on the sand, aching to hurt him, but Robert seems to finally realise that the atmosphere has shifted to something more serious. He quickly stands, and staggers up the beach. 

John is standing with his back to Sherlock, watching Robert leave, almost vibrating with anger. Sherlock says nothing. He pours the melted ice water onto the remains of the fire and gathers up their belongings. As he starts towards the house, John runs up behind him and silently falls into step.

When they reach the house, Sherlock locks the gate, sets Mycroft's nuclear-level alarm system. John breaks the silence with a laugh.

"It's just Robert limping about out there," he says, gently, as Sherlock scowls over the keypad.

"I like the idea of him howling at the fortress gates," Sherlock murmurs, then turns to take in John, who still looks flushed, wild-eyed. His knuckles are red, and it's all Sherlock can do not to press his lips to them. "John..."

"I'm so sorry," he says, all in a rush. "You just wanted to have a few days to write and I-- dragged all this along..."

Sherlock is still staring at John's hands. "Are they okay?" John follows Sherlock's gaze to his knuckles, stares at them in confusion for a second, then laughs again, genuinely.

"Have you seen your face?" 

Curious, Sherlock goes to the mirror in the bathroom to assess the damage. Looks worse than it is, he decides. His cut lip has contributed the majority of visible blood. The corner of his mouth swollen like a toothache, and the red beginnings of a bruise is filling out over his cheekbone. The cumulative effect seems almost cartoonish; he half expects to see bluebirds flying in circles around his head. He smiles at the image, can't help it, and rinses the blood from his mouth, splashes cold water on his face. Feeling slightly more presentable, he finds John in the kitchen. 

"We used all the ice--" he starts, and when he looks up he's almost startled. "How does it look worse now?"

"By 'it', you mean my one and only face?" Sherlock says, feigning insult, hitching himself onto the bench.

John is refilling ice cube trays and setting them in the freezer. As he closes the door he looks back at him. "I'm so sorry..."

"Stop it." 

" _Bastard_ ," John snaps, looks out the window as if he expects to see Robert lurking ghoulishly there. "You looked a bit scary, before."

"It was you doing all the tough guy stuff."

"You looked like you were going to grow fangs and rip him to bits. He came at you again, but he saw your face and backed off."

Sherlock shrugs and looks down, hardly about to take pride in snarling on the periphery like a guard dog on a chain. "If he touched you, I-- I know you can look after yourself, but I..." 

"I know," John says calmly, gently.

"What he said to you--"

"He's disgusting. I let him come back--" John starts, his voice rising in anger and fading away again. He rubs his shoulder, lets out a breath. "I know I shouldn't, but I actually feel betrayed. That shit he said."

Sherlock's blood pressure rises at that, inexplicably, and he feels his cheek throb with it. His hands tighten on the granite countertop, the stone cutting cold against his palms. He tries to vocalise something, but no sound comes. He can feel John watching him but he can't return his gaze, not while he thinks of John feeling regret for having trusted someone, regret for being his open self, his generous self. Robert’s behaviour is seeming to him more and more suspicious, as if somehow deliberate, and the thought of him taking advantage of the goodness in John, as inherent to him as his blonde hair or his long fingers, is almost unbearable.

"Are you in pain?" John looks uneasy. "Should you get this looked at?"

Sherlock shakes his head quickly, gathers himself. "I'm fine, I was just--" he wavers, unsure if it's too much to say, but the pain and the fading adrenaline and the anger swells up and bears him over the hesitation. "I was just thinking that if someone asked me to describe you in one word, I'd say that you're good. There are lots of things I could say about you, but you're fundamentally good. That he would try and hurt you by twisting that goodness to make you feel foolish for being that way, for loving him, which I know you did, maybe you still do, it... just makes me angry." 

Sherlock still can't look at John, he stares instead intently at Mycroft's tasteful dark tiles, the tracked-in sand from the beach. In his periphery he sees John move to him, rests a hand on his knee, and he feels something in him grow feral, form sharp edges. He slides off the bench. "You did the right thing." John looks quickly up at Sherlock and seems to hesitate. "I'm going to go, try sleep off this headache."

"Yeah..." John nods. He gives Sherlock a small, weak smile, and Sherlock knows he should stay, knows John needs company but he can't trust himself, feels ready to crawl out of his skin to be closer to him, any second now he'll break with it, and it'll all be over. 

"Don't answer your phone if he calls you."

"No." John is momentarily distracted by the thought, and Sherlock tries to wrench his thoughts away from where they're starting to whirlpool, circling around his hands, his lips, his breath. "No, okay, of course. Okay. Goodnight." He looks almost lost.

"You know where I am. If you need me."

"Yeah..."

"Goodnight," Sherlock says, more tersely than he would have liked, and as he walks away to the hall he feels as if he is trying to escape the gravity of a large solar body. He couldn't despise himself more.

In his bedroom he strips out of what he is starting to think of as the yacht clothes, changes into a t-shirt and pajama pants. Something about the action makes him feel calmer, more like himself, and he considers returning to John, maybe breaking out some wine and cigarettes. _Like a civilised human being._

He's standing, wavering in this thought, when there's a soft knock on the bedroom door. John opens the door and looks around it, looking somehow more etiolated than before. He has changed into sleep clothes as well.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry, I can't sleep in there. His things are in there--"

Sherlock doesn't know how to respond, words evaporating in his throat. He finds himself nodding without thinking. "Anywhere, John, any room--"

"Don't make me ask."

Something about his tone twists a knife in Sherlock, and he's still nodding, bewildered. He wonders mildly if three moderate blows to the head can cause hallucinations, because something about it is too sweet to bear, John standing on the threshold to his room with a sad, hopeful look. He goes to John, draws him inside and closes the door behind him, then pulls the sheets on the bed back for him, feeling like an overly-helpful hotel porter. John crosses the room, switching off lights as he comes, climbs into the white, cloud-like expanse of the bed. Sherlock crosses to the other side, heart in his throat, knowing he should speak, but John beats him to it.

"If this is weird, I don't have to--"

"It's fine," Sherlock says quietly, switching off the last lamp and settling against the mountain of pillows.

"How's your face?"

"Well, not my first time being punched."

"Not your last, either," John says, seriously, and when Sherlock looks over he can almost make out a grin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some PROGRESS.

John wakes to the sound of his voice being called, seemingly from a distance away, and the sound of the metal crashing against metal. He sits up, disorientated, the room's layout unfamiliar and startling in the dark. It's only until Sherlock stirs next to him that he reorients himself, the shadows of the room forming something recognisable, as if snapping into focus.

“ _John, come out_.”

Robert. For a strange second he feels almost apprehensive, tensing unconsciously at the idea of seeing him. He's unsettled by the thought of Robert walking in the night for all this time before cycling back, or worse, lingering outside for hours, his anger fermenting.

He suddenly remembers Sherlock setting the security system, his shrug and little joke about locking him out of the fortress. He predicted it, he realises with a start, even while bleeding and furious, that part of his mind was still quietly working. Knew Robert would come back, knew John would be sitting in the dark, heart racing. Maybe he didn't predict that John would be in his bed, he thinks, and that heartens him slightly-- he knows Sherlock likes him when he goes off-script.

Sherlock rolls onto his back. His shirt is sleep-twisted and reveals his hip, a palmful of stomach. John wants to press himself to it. 

"You okay?" Sherlock says, his voice like gravel.

"Robert's outside."

Sherlock groans, stretches in a way that makes John think of a big cat, smooth and slow. He rolls himself out of the bed and onto his feet in one heavy-limbed movement. 

"What are you doing?"

"He wants his bag," Sherlock mumbles, lurches out of the room. John doesn't ask him how he knows. Instead, he drops down onto Sherlock’s side of the bed, the remaining body warmth like an embrace, and lies there until he can steel himself to follow. 

He catches up with Sherlock as he's hitting the outdoor lights, padding down the front steps with Robert’s bag swinging from one hand. John waits by the door, where it’s dark, feeling still sleep-slow. 

Robert seems to rally upon seeing Sherlock, and shakes the security gate loudly with one hand. "Fuck off, creep, where's John?"

"In bed, last time I saw him," Sherlock says quietly, his voice carrying. Robert’s anger seems to boil over that, he shakes the gate once more. John feels his throat tighten in anger as well, his hands balling into fists. A year ago, he would have given almost anything for this, to see Robert half-wild needing to see him, Robert driven to violence over the prospect of losing him. Robert jealous. 

Sherlock is unmoved, he zips Robert’s bag up and drops it over the barrier. “Get out of here, I won’t say it again.” He turns to go.

“He’ll never see you like that,” Robert calls after him, his voice almost obscenely loud in the stillness of the night. “He practically stalked me, you know that? One sympathy fuck, and for a year he followed me around like a lost--” 

What comes next happens so fast John can’t process it, all that registers is a sickening sound, bone singing against solid metal, and Robert’s voice cutting off in a breathless hitch. He finally makes out that Sherlock has turned back, and that his hand is tight in Robert’s hair through the bars of the fence, forcing his skull against the metal. Sherlock’s head is bowed, John can see his lips moving, his expression placid. All he can hear is the slow moan of the ocean as Sherlock whispers to Robert, now gone slack, his eyes wide. When he’s done, Sherlock pushes him away as casually as closing a door.

Robert stares after Sherlock as he turns back to the house, as calm as the night around him. In one sudden movement Robert scoops up the fallen bag from the sandy ground and slings it over his shoulder. He takes a few steps backwards, the darkness swallowing him like a slow-dissolve.

John wavers by the front door. He considers going back to bed, but Sherlock would know, already knows he’s standing there; he couldn’t get that past him. His mind goes blank as Sherlock approaches, words bottlenecking in his throat. Sherlock pulls the door closed.

“Impolite,” he says, casually as the weather, and John feels that which had grown hard and sharp-edged inside him soften. 

His face is a disaster, illuminated by the light from the hall. John’s stomach twists in sympathy at the sight of it. The swelling is at what he hopes is its peak, the redness shifting into the beginnings of bruises. He wonders if the ice in the freezer has set, if there’s any use for it now. 

“Stop staring,” Sherlock says as he resets the door alarm, switches the front light out. 

“Sherlock...”

“Stop it,” Sherlock says, his voice firmer, his expression softer. He turns to John, smoothes his hair with a heavy palm. “Come on,” he mumbles, his tone low. “Come to bed.” 

 _He shouldn’t be allowed to say that, like that_ , John thinks, wildly, almost frozen in place by it. Sherlock starts towards the bedroom and John follows, heart in his throat, wondering if his legs can bear him that far.  

He feels faintly ridiculous in the face of Sherlock’s stoicism. He can’t imagine what Robert’s theatrics and his own history, now laid out in the most humiliating way possible, must seem like to his eyes. Since leaving Berlin, the memory of his feelings for Robert were something that he found himself nursing like a small flame, something that could warm or burn him depending on how close he drew to it. That quiet ache seemed somehow essential to him, something that proved he was capable of something that whole-hearted-- even when it began to feel as though it was all in the past tense, and harmless. 

In the rational part of his mind, he knows it’s the same mistake he’s repeating with fundamentally unavailable Sherlock. He knows the night should be a lesson that spurs him to _sort himself out_ , once and for all, but even as this thought comes to him, Sherlock is closing the bedroom door behind him, and John loses any will at all. 

“Thanks for not asking what I said to him,” Sherlock says, almost too quiet to hear. 

“Would you have told me,” John mumbles in reply, not really a question. He rubs his hands over his face, briefly letting himself submerge in self-loathing. He thinks of Robert calling him a stalker, and of Sherlock believing him. Thinks of what he must look like, forlorn, drifting hopefully from one uninterested party to another. Thinks of Annie, who hates him now, but liked him very much before that, who was quick and sharp, but not cutting, not in the way Sherlock can be. Who had no real problems with him, except for the reasonable expectation that her boyfriend wouldn’t pine hopelessly for her friends. Thinks of where he would be if he hadn’t worked out that he was just a little more interested in the other team. 

He looks over at Sherlock. Although he must be furious at Robert and John both, he has been steady, loyal. John feels almost desperate for more of it, even though he knows that it’s dangerous to push-- Sherlock could snap at any moment, like a cat that scratches when tired of being handled. 

“Stop thinking so hard,” Sherlock says, out of nowhere. John frowns. 

“Just sleep.”

“Can’t, with you vibrating there.”

“You’re right, what the fuck am I even--” John pushes back the blankets, swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He’s suddenly burning with frustration, embarrassment. For the first time he feels wronged, somehow, as he could fool himself into thinking it wasn’t his weakness at the root of all his problems.

“I didn’t mean that,” Sherlock says. He props himself back on his forearm as John stands.

“No, there are so many beds in this house--” 

Sherlock leans over, tugs John’s arm hard enough that he topples forward to regain balance. He reaches up and tangles his hand in John’s hair, and John can’t do much else but half-crawl closer to him. He’s not quite remembering how to breathe, or think, but somehow he’s leaning half-over Sherlock, lowering his head so that Sherlock can stroke his hand to his nape. 

“Sherlock,” he manages, an apology in advance, propelled by some forward motion he can't quite rein in. He leans down to brush his lips over the dark areas on his face, his cheekbone, his jaw. They feel warmer than they should, swollen with an unhealthy heat, and his fingers curl in the sheets with guilt. He slowly, carefully, ghosts a kind of a kiss to Sherlock’s cut lip, and when he draws back he can taste the metallic trace of it. Sherlock is very quiet, very still, staring hard at John in the dark. His hand hasn’t moved from where it rests on his nape. John swallows and lowers his head, his heart racing, nerves alight. “I’m so sorry. For everything--”

Sherlock shakes his head slightly, then hooks his arm around him, draws him to his side. John curls against him as if his bones have lost their ability to keep him up. Sherlock’s hand is slow, steady against his back, and when it slips under John’s shirt he shivers, presses his face to Sherlock’s neck. He still smells like wood smoke.

“You did the right thing,” Sherlock says into John’s hair, and John nods, his mind blank. Every time he’s close to Sherlock he’s freshly surprised at the way his long limbs, his light steps, manage to disguise the solidity of his body. He’s somehow dense in a way that makes John wonder, with a rush of blood, what it would be like to be under him.

Sherlock arranges the cover over both of them, then relaxes into John as if something has switched off, his hand loosely curled at the small of his back. They sleep like that, Sherlock sooner than John, who lies thinking of Sherlock earlier with him by the fire. They were almost drunk, and Sherlock was reciting the lyrics along with the stereo, his expression mock-serious, as if it were a shared joke. Something about him knowing the words was so unexpected that he couldn’t stop laughing, like seeing a dog open its mouth to speak perfect English. Thinking of Sherlock, deadpan, saying _I’ve been in this town so long_ , John realises there’s no comparison, no pattern to be drawn between Robert and him. Sherlock is singular to him, someone who has been known to cover his ears when a taxi driver won't turn the radio off, but somewhere, somehow, has memorised the lyrics to that song. Someone who some days can barely stand to shake a stranger’s hand, but who’ll hold John to help him sleep. Someone who’ll take a punch to the face instead of escalating a fight, and then shrug it off with an eyeroll. Maybe John beginning to see this person as essential to him isn’t a sign of weakness, but the natural response.

Sherlock sleeps like he was born to do it, and eventually John follows him.

\---

Sherlock is brooding at the kitchen bench with coffee when John returns from town the next morning, laden with supplies. It’s a kind of _build it and they will come situation_ ; he hopes that food, cigarettes and spirits will forestall the inevitable scratching at the door as soon as Sherlock realises they’re spending their third day outside of London. For some reason he wants to stay where they are, badly. It could be that leaving immediately would be admitting to the strangeness of the night before, or possibly it’s the prospect of having Sherlock’s uninterrupted beachside attention.

“Morning, sunshine,” John calls to him, followed by an involuntary grimace of concern when Sherlock looks up.

“You’ll give me a complex if you keep this up, you know,” Sherlock says into his mug.

“I’m sorry, it looks so bad--”

“Not helpful.” The swelling on Sherlock’s face has died down overnight, but the bruises have filled out and set heavily against his light complexion. “Didn’t you see me when you got up?”

“You were curled up on the other side of the bed,” John says, shrugging and setting his bags down. “And it was a bit dark still.”

“You’re freakish.”

John looks up at Sherlock at that, raises his eyebrows slowly, then grins as he starts to unpack. “I am. Speaking of freakish, thank you for the twenty text messages--” One benefit to living with a borderline-precognitive genius is there’s rarely any need to leave a note for them. Shopping lists are also delivered apparently automatically in stream-of-consciousness, 160-character segments.

“Wasn’t twenty,” Sherlock mumbles. When John produces a pack of cigarettes Sherlock almost groans, coffee spilling as he leans to grab it out of his hands. “Angel.”

“Are you going to eat breakfast, or are you taking sustenance by lung only?” John sets down a tube of antiseptic cream for his lip, arnica ointment for the bruises in front of Sherlock with a significant look. Sherlock shrugs dismissively and slides off his stool, moving around the bench to hunt through the kitchen drawers, presumably for matches.

John pours himself a coffee and starts on a doughnut from the box he bought back from the bakery. Sherlock seems to have discovered a way of making fire; he leaves abruptly without word to the front veranda. John is surprised as he follows-- Sherlock is not one to bow to smoke detectors. Mycroft’s presence hangs more strongly over the house than he would have guessed. 

“Eat something, you were pretty drunk last night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t get hungover,” Sherlock says through a mouthful of smoke, slouched in a canvas chair. John drops the box on the table in front of them. The veranda is wide, sea-air weathered, with stairs that lead directly onto the bench. Sherlock looks ridiculously out of place, like a unwilling Victorian sent to the seaside on a constitutional. 

“Just eat, I bought them for you,” John says, and Sherlock looks up at him, silent for a long moment. 

“Go on, then,” he says, holding out his hand for the box. He seems to choose the first pastry he sets his hand on, and slumps back in his chair. 

“For someone who doesn't get hangovers, I’ve never seen anyone more wretched-looking.”

“This is just mornings in general, John, you may not notice because you’re busy jogging or performing sun salutations or whatever it is you do--”

“I’m always in the kitchen with you in the mornings, Sherlock,” John interrupts. Sherlock looks up at him as if he is trying to recall a particularly distant and inconsequential memory.

“I suppose so,” he concedes, dismissively, and flicks ash away as if that signals the end of the discussion. John smiles, widely, can’t help it. He feels a sudden ache of relief for Sherlock’s bad mood, which in hindsight he should have counted on. It’s only now he realises he spent the morning dreading seeing him, worrying something would have changed overnight, that he had pushed things too far, or, worse, that Sherlock would feel obliged to be gentle with him, to pity him. 

“No word from Robert?” Sherlock asks. John shakes his head, gives a little who-cares eyeroll that he hopes is convincing. “He needed to be needed by you.”

John pauses with a mouthful of doughnut. He wants to cut this off, now.

“He had it down to an art, probably, in Berlin. Knew how to give you just enough to keep you going. He didn’t expect you to leave, and when you did, he came here and did exactly what you would have wanted back then, didn't he? He said things to you would have wanted to hear? Had a kind of personality transplant-- was suddenly the person you imagined he could be?” John frowns warily. “He’s probably a psychopath,” Sherlock concludes, as calmly as if he was identifying a flower on a nature walk. 

“A--” John starts, is interrupted.

“Not in the colloquial sense. And I’m not saying that because of that,” Sherlock indicates where they were on the beach by drawing a circle in the air with his cigarette. “There are many of them out there. A few child psychologists out there suggested the same of me-- I disagree of course, but then again, most do.”

“I don’t think he’s a psychopath,” John says weakly. When he reaches for Sherlock's cigarettes in an attempt to hide his discomfort, Sherlock raises his eyebrow and offers John his half-smoked one instead. “I mean, I’d know, we were very close...”

“That’s your first mistake, Watson, psychopaths don’t come up and announce themselves. It would defeat their purpose. What do you think Robert wanted from you?”

“Well...”

“Sex, wasn't it? And power over you, control. In your opinion, what was the best way he could have ensured having that with you?”

John makes a face. “He could have been a bit nicer--”

“No. Think, John. You specifically. If he was kind to you, if he was that Robert--” Sherlock points to the beach again. “It took you a week to get rid of that Robert, because he fucked it up, miscalculated. Before, he got months of your absolute devotion by giving you a glimpse of something you wanted, didn’t he? How’d he do it?”

John takes a half-hearted drag on Sherlock’s cigarette, tries not to cough as he looks away. “When I was still with Annie. We got drunk together one night, and he kind of told me some things. About how he was with past boyfriends, about how he...” John trails off. This is too much information to give him, he thinks, but it’s too late, 

Sherlock sees his hesitance and seems to perk up. He takes a large bite of his danish, like eating popcorn in a movie theatre.

“Says he scares people he’s interested in away because he gets in too deep. Gets possessive,” Sherlock says through a mouthful of pastry, sounding no less decisive for it. John feels the hair on the back of his neck raise, can’t meet Sherlock’s eyes. “Am I right?”

John mumbles a non-word, suddenly extremely interested in the sleeve of his sweater. 

“When he sees you slipping away, he brings it up again, doesn’t he? Seems to get a little jealous? Does something unpredictable? But as soon as you’re back on board, he’s back to calling you at night, too late to go on a date, but not too late for him to come over...”

“Sherlock,” John says, shaking his head quickly. His heart is beating faster, now, the relief he felt earlier curdling into something else. He thinks of the time he was planning to break it off, had been drifting towards someone else, an artist that Robert suddenly had become wildly jealous of. He remembers around that time, in bed, Robert saying something like _you’re mine_ , and how long those two words had kept him going. “It’s not...”

“John, the label isn’t important, but what’s important is that you understand. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it is.” Sherlock sits forward in his chair, manages to catch John’s eyes. “You apologised to me last night. After the things he said about you, you came in and apologised to me. You can’t do that.”

“Sherlock, I called it off. And I am sorry, I’m sorry for bringing him here, I’m sorry that he hit you. I can’t just accept that I played no part in it putting you in that situation because he’s manipulative. Maybe he is. Maybe he doesn’t know how manipulative he is.”

“He doesn’t,” Sherlock says, firmly. “That’s how it works, with-- with people like him. Manipulating people, adopting certain behaviours to suit their means, that’s just how the world is ordered to them; in their minds, that’s what smart people do. To them, there’s nothing wrong, they’re just better at it than others. Everything he did with you was perfectly natural, instinctive behaviour.”

“Sherlock, I’m not going to--”

“I just want you to understand.” Sherlock is looking at John, hard now. “What I said last night, I meant. About you being good. There are far fewer good people in this world than bad, I believe that, and the thing about good people is that they’re easy marks.”

“Fuck off,” John snaps, suddenly. 

“Why do you think he latched on to me? I raised his antennae, and he raised mine--”

“No, actually. The reason he latched onto you was that I told him there was someone else,” John says, fast. Honesty is a risk, but all he can think is that he finally has an ace up his sleeve. He can’t think of much else past stopping this, and can’t stand to be scrutinised while still nursing a night’s worth of reopened wounds. “And he thought it was you.”

Sherlock’s face goes momentarily blank, with frustration or with surprise John can’t tell. He’s watching him carefully, now, and John stands his ground, sets his jaw, lets Sherlock take his fill of whatever evidence he’s trying to gather. Whatever he’s reading into him, if he couldn't work it out from the way John crawled to him in bed the night before, he never will. 

“That’s interesting,” Sherlock says, finally, slowly. "So--"

"You know these things will kill you," John snaps, out of nowhere, throwing down the cigarette and stomping it out viciously. He picks up another pastry from the box and tears into it with his teeth as he storms inside, all his calm burning off him like morning fog.

\---

Sherlock avoids him for the rest of the day, long enough for John's irritation to transmute to faint embarrassment. He withdraws in the afternoon to read on the beach, out of the line of sight of the house. He barely notices the temperature dropping, the sky darkening, so absorbed he is in a photocopied journal article of a density and opacity he feels grateful for rather than irritated by, for a change. It's only when he feels the first cool, fat raindrops that he realises a storm has blown in, and by then it's too late. He runs as best he can back to the house, the pages, a woefully inadequate umbrella, disintegrating in his hands in the sudden deluge. 

When he reaches the veranda all he can manage to do is to stand there, dripping, catching his breath as though he had run a much further distance. The only light comes filtered through the living room window, and the faint green light of the dark sky. As he tries to wring as much water as he can from his hair and clothes he catches sight of Sherlock napping on the same deck chair as that morning, a paperback dangling from one hand. 

He pauses and watches Sherlock sleep as long as he dares, running his eyes over the bruises, faint knit of his eyebrows, looking as though he's having a complicated dream. It feels strange to John whenever he freshly notices that Sherlock is handsome-- his face has grown so familiar to him that it's almost a surprise to remember that he must go about in the world unwittingly inducing from strangers the same kind of admiration as his own. He feels faintly possessive about it, almost as though he wishes the effect Sherlock has could apply to him alone, for his eyes only. _No one else could have it quite as bad_ , he reminds himself, but the thought doesn't cheer him.

At the sound of thunder Sherlock shifts and opens his eyes slowly, looking almost feline in his lassitude, looking up at John. Feeling faintly ridiculous, John starts shaking himself off again, kicking off his shoes.

"Can you get me a towel?" he asks Sherlock, who shrugs, resettles.

"Thought you'd left me for dead here," Sherlock mumbles. "No means of survival. Not even a number for delivery."

John turns back, raises an eyebrow. "Funny, I thought that was your plan? Before we gatecrashed."

"I didn't think it through," Sherlock says, seemingly unconcerned. He hauls himself to his feet and disappears into the house for a long enough time to make John wonder if he has simply resumed his nap. 

Shivering, John attempts for a second time to peel off his woolen cardigan, which clings to his skin as though it can't bear to be parted from him. When Sherlock returns he's doubled over, having managed to somehow tangle his hands in the process of removal. 

"Idiot," Sherlock says quietly, dropping a towel and a dry sweater at his feet and taking hold of the hem. He drags it with some force over John's head, ignoring his protests of _don't stretch it_ , and when John is free he drops it in a heap by the door. 

"Thanks," John says, his heart not quite in it as he scoops up the towel, rubbing his hair violently. 

"It couldn't get any more stretched."

"I like it how it is."

Sherlock paces as John dries himself, looking out into the storm. The wind somehow makes his wild hair seem even wilder, as though he should be standing on a cliff in a Friedrich painting rather than the veranda of a beach house a few hours out of London. When he turns back to John, his tone and expression have changed.

"I think we need to talk."

John stills his hands, somehow understanding immediately what he means, but too taken aback by hearing the words coming from Sherlock's mouth rather than his own to reply. How many times had he himself been a breath from saying them, in that way, with that look on his face? 

"Sure," he says, trying to sound unconcerned. "I'm very cold, though, so I'll just--"

"Don't be like that." He sounds faintly commanding, faintly imploring. 

John stands quietly, twisting the towel in his hands, his eyes fixed on Sherlock. 

"I know we have to. I just... don't want to," he manages, shrugging a little. He scoops up the dry sweater from where Sherlock has dropped it and shrugs it on, only realising once the sleeves hit mid-palm that it's one of Sherlock's. He pushes them up and drops to sit on the steps, feeling caught out, somehow, to have not been the one to initiate this. If he's honest, a small part of him had been hoping Sherlock could somehow ignore his breaches forever, and John could continue to test the boundaries of their friendship and never be forced to explain it, to risk anything. 

Sherlock nods, silent for a moment, then turns and heads inside. For a moment John thinks he is leaving, is horrified to come so close and then abort, but then he sees the light go on in the kitchen, and Sherlock retrieving a bottle of red wine. He pours what seems to be a large amount into a mug he finds on the drying rack and carries it back out. 

John rolls his eyes as Sherlock hands it to him, but accepts it with both hands and takes a sip. Sherlock sits on the steps next to him, and for a second John thinks he can see a flicker of hesitation as well. Something about it makes him bolder.

"I'm sorry," he starts, then immediately regrets it. "I don't know how to say it."

"I'll start. I think you kissed me last night, in bed. In my bed."

John swallows the impulse to explain it away, remind him how much he had had to drink, how shaken up he felt, how guilty. "Yes."

"I know that it isn't the first time something like that has happened, between us, but I think..." 

 _I think I'd do it every fucking day of my life if you would let me_ , John thinks, staring down into his mug, his fingers tightening around it involuntarily. Sherlock seems to notice, and shifts to take it from him, taking a sip of his own. As he does he manages to catch John's gaze, and holds it for a moment.

"Maybe you could tell me what you want," he goes on, his tone too gentle for John to feel completely at ease with.

"I want to be your friend."

"You are, John." 

"Nothing has to change, just because I'm like this..."

"Don't be obtuse," Sherlock sighs, and John feels himself draw back into himself, feeling thin-skinned, wary. "You told me a while ago you used to wonder how I could write characters' emotional lives, because you thought mine is atypical, do you remember?"

John nods a little, his fingers brushing Sherlock's as he takes the mug.

"Well, when there are times that I haven't experienced an analogous emotion, or situation, but understand it would be correct for the character, I usually try to break it down to symptoms-- identifying what physiological responses would be common, what chemical changes in the brain could be taking place. From there, I try to understand their response in the simplest manner I can, the same way I would approach working out motive when I have a case-- what they need in a situation, what would attract them, what would cause them alarm. It's a kind of way to build up artificial empathy from scratch."

"Not thrilled about where this is going, Sherlock..." John says quietly.

Sherlock shakes his head. "I say this because maybe if I can explain a character to myself, and by extension to a reader using that method, I can explain myself to you." He pauses. "I don't have a frame of reference for this."

John feels a rush of interest and apprehension in one burst. He takes a long sip of wine then looks up, steeling himself. "Okay."

Sherlock thinks for a moment, tucking unruly hair back behind his ear in a gesture almost too quick to see. "A strong desire to ensure your wellbeing. And pleasure when you appear to care for mine." He seems to watch John for a reaction, but John struggles to do more than stare, blood rising in his cheeks. "Desire for your approval. Corresponding impulse to keep certain things concealed from you. Jealousy for your attention."

"Sherlock..."

"Unhappiness when it is directed elsewhere," he goes on, his gaze unrelenting. 

"It's not. Often. You must know that."

Sherlock raises his eyebrows silently, then looks down, pressing his hands to his knees.

"I didn't sleep with him," John says without thinking, all in a rush. As soon as he says it he feels himself ignite with his own embarrassment and looks away, lips pressed together in a kind of cringe.

"Why not?" Sherlock asks, his voice quiet. His hair moves on its own accord in the wind, but the rest of him seems solid, immovable, placid.

"Because of you."

"What about me?" It seems unlike Sherlock to fish so blatantly, but he has been bold enough to be direct with him, in his own way, John thinks. Maybe he's seeking to be reassured by the same in return.

"I suppose it seems stupid to you," he starts. "I know you don't care. Care about things like that, I mean. About sex. But I do, care about it, and you-- I care about you so much, so..." Sherlock is watching him in a way that makes John want to cover his face. He rolls and unrolls a long sleeve. "We both know something's happening here," he says finally, sounding faintly aggrieved. He takes a sip of wine the second the words leave his mouth, as if he could fill the space they took up. 

Sherlock says nothing, and instead reaches for him, running his fingers under his loose sleeve, over his wrist. John tries to hide his shiver at the contact and tips his head away, as if to clear it. 

"No?" Sherlock asks, removing his hand. 

"No," John says softly, staring fixedly down. "I mean, not no, just... just what. Where are we right now?" 

"It's like you said, nothing has to change. Except for this trying to hide from each other." 

"Oh," John says, dumbly. He feels faint relief, faint disappointment. 

When he looks up, Sherlock is looking away through the rain to the sea with an expression that seems to be close to melancholy. John realises with a start just how difficult this must be for him, how foreign. And how brave it was of him to take the initiative. 

"Sherlock," he says quietly. He suddenly understands the purpose of pet names, endearments; he wishes he had something more to call him. 

Sherlock looks back at him, seeming faintly vulnerable, and a sudden rush of affection numbs him to the residual hesitation. John reaches for his hand, turns it over gently, and bows his head to brush a kiss to his soft palm. He hears Sherlock exhale heavily as he looks up, guiding the hand to his waist. Something seems to loosen in Sherlock. He drops a knee to the step below so he can wrap his other arm around John, fisting both hands loosely at the small of John's back, pressing his face to his neck. As he stills like that, quietly breathing, John runs his palm along his back, slowly, the way you might while comforting someone who has received bad news. 

Sherlock is still there for a moment, breathing against John's neck. John feels his own breath go unsteady as he strokes Sherlock's hair, turning his head to kiss it before speaking. 

"Everything you said, Sherlock... before. It could be, you know, symptoms-- if you want to call it that-- of, uh, of friendship. Close friendship." It seems ridiculous to say it, when Sherlock is bowed warm around him, his long fingers curled in his sweater, but a part of John is greedy for him, for his words.

"Strong... interest in your body," Sherlock mumbles, so quiet John can barely hear it over the rain. "Desire for contact with it, pleasure when it is offered. Intense preoccupation with evidence of reciprocal feelings."

John closes his eyes as Sherlock kisses his neck, strokes both hands along his side to his hips. When he opens them Sherlock has drawn back far enough to watch him, and John nods slightly, rests a hand on his shoulder, his fingers moving slowly along the seam of his shirt.

"Well, that's less platonic, so..." he says, barely aware of the words coming out of his mouth, Sherlock holding his gaze with a strange, calm expression. "I just, you said you don't--"

"I don't want to have sex with you," Sherlock finishes for him, and John finds himself nodding dumbly, taken aback by it being said so bluntly. "Not with you specifically, if there was anyone I'd like it to be you, but just in general. I don't think I do. At the moment." He pauses. "It's very complicated."

"You don't--" The thought of sex with Sherlock is too much for John to currently process. "You don't have to explain it, or... or anything, I don't care-- mind. I don't mind."

"You don't?" Sherlock asks curiously.

"It's not what's important."

"It's not important to you?"

"Stop it," John sighs. "Would you rather me say it's a dealbreaker?"

"If it is, to you, then yes," Sherlock says, sounding more intent. "I don't know if my feelings about it will change. Can change. But you're a normal person, I understand that, and so a part of what has been holding me back with you is this sense that while I want you, John, I know there are those things that are expected. Things that I don't know if I can--"

"Shh," John interrupts, shifting forward to the edge of the step. "There's nothing expected."

"You say that now..."

John shakes his head, brushing Sherlock's hair gently away from his temple. "It's only me."

"But is it right for me to-- deny you something I could give you, and at the same time wish to deny your seeking it from others?"

"I don't want it if it isn't from you," John says quietly, and that seems to land. Sherlock dips his head into John's hand, closes his eyes. "Sherlock, this is okay. This is enough. Knowing is enough. So thank you, for-- making us talk. I know it can't have been easy..."

Sherlock seems to say _terrifying_ , but John can't be sure. He cups Sherlock's head in his hands, careful of his bruises, and brushes a kiss to his forehead. "It's only me," he says again, softly, and Sherlock nods.

"It's you."


	7. Chapter 7

Bliss. A kind of bliss that seems like it shouldn't be allowed, when so prolonged, with no side effect, and no comedown. John in his bed, milk-white at night, glowing golden in the mornings. John reading with him, breathing softly, although the most natural place for him to be is resting his head in Sherlock's lap, their pages going unturned for minutes at a time. John by his side on a case: calm, serious, interested, a notepad in one hand, a camera hung from his shoulder, and-- new-- a shy, private smile, when no one is watching, a flutter of fingers along his wrist, his back. That alone enough to make his train of thought derail.

It is what they would call the honeymoon period, he supposes, this honeyed moon since their first kiss, on the steps to the beach. John's rain-cold body that had warmed slowly to match his own temperature. It was a cautious kiss, with Sherlock's cut lip and his terror in the way, as though John would pull back and declare the whole thing a joke, or Sherlock would wake from his dream with all the work still ahead of him. But if he didn't love him already, it would have been hard not to after that night. John, who disposed of his hesitance like he was sweeping a table clean-- and this he should have known of him, of John who has no trace of cruelty in him. Even if he had been rebuffed it would have been done with the anesthetic delicacy of a surgeon. 

How many days had they wasted, with this joy latent between them? What was the first day John would have allowed himself to be kissed good morning, good night, against the kitchen bench, in the back of a taxi? Would have let that smooth skin of his stomach to be stroked under his heavy clothes? How soon could Sherlock have heard him utter his soft non-words into his mouth, if he had only asked?

And how could he have known in their first weeks together, what that same reserved John would become to him. How would he have behaved if he had? He would have watched more carefully, would have unsettled him more in his watching, he knows this. Skittish John, who at the beginning was off-kilter enough at his observations, his shortcuts-- Sherlock knows now (because of him, of his help), that conversational efficiency does not friendship make. Even if he sees it, the stain of newsprint, the one significant receipt in his pocket detritus, the residue of unset asphalt causing his sole to click as he walks, he shouldn't offer up his conclusions, not every time. 

It isn't that John doesn't appreciate his cleverness. He does, when directed towards something other than himself. Sherlock remembers when he found him unknowingly reading his novel, the new one, in hardcover and bookstore-fresh, the receipt still tucked-in as a bookmark. It had stirred something, even back then, in the time before he was able to put a name to his own fascination with him. There was a kind of a sweeping warmth, and apprehension, a kind of stage-fright, too, at seeing John at the breakfast table, mug in one hand, his work in the other. It had been as though he was turning the pages of Sherlock himself with those gentle fingers. He remembers that John had caught him watching, had asked him if he disapproved, and all that Sherlock could manage was a joke that he had heard the author was _fucking brilliant_. Why he didn't immediately come clean he's not sure, perhaps through an impulse to prolong the strange pleasure he took in John's curiosity about his writing-- how wonderful, he had thought at the time, to have an object of your curiosity reciprocate that interest. This, of course, before he had known the greater joy of having the object of affection reciprocate that affection, and furthermore to intensify it in its reciprocity, like a mirror placed before a mirror.

Not a perfect analogy, of course. His hunger is different, he knows, to John's corresponding hunger, and it seems a kind of cruelty of the universe that they have to be so misaligned, for one to cause the other, but not to feed it. And kind John, who doesn't deserve it, but who does all he can to not escalate, to keep the unspoken off the table. Who angles his body away when something threatens to pull him under, as though it were possible to hide his arousal by such simple means. As though he could spare Sherlock of his guilt in those moments. 

Moments like this morning, with John underneath him on his bed, chin tipped back, throat trembling under Sherlock's lips. His hands skidding over Sherlock's hair, his shoulders, and then words riding out on a shallow breath. 

"Sherlock, slow." He shifts and sits up, lowering his head to kiss Sherlock's shoulder. "I can't..."

Sherlock nods and draws back, slow and dull with joy, letting John put space between their bodies. He closes his eyes as John draws his collar back and kisses the curve of his neck. 

"I'm sorry." 

"We don't have to stop," John says quietly, his arm sliding slowly around Sherlock's waist, settling so they lie side by side. He raises his eyes to Sherlock's, cheeks flushed, hair wild from Sherlock's hands in it. There's a pleasure to seeing it, any physical trace from Sherlock on him, and for a moment all he can do is look. 

John's breath has steadied again, and he sighs quietly as Sherlock smoothes his hair. "I'll learn. What makes-- what is bad for you."

"Technically speaking, it would be what's good," John says without heat, running his hand slowly along Sherlock's arm, drawing it over himself. "Doesn't matter."

"It does, a little, though, doesn't it," Sherlock says quietly. There is the question, _how long will you consent to this_ , that had started reverberating almost as soon as Sherlock had realised this new happiness is dependent entirely on John's, with all the fear that accompanies it. Others have probably learned earlier how to modulate that fear, how to not step immediately on the accelerator, emotionally speaking, like he has done. Like many rites of passages, Sherlock missed that lesson entirely, and for the first time regrets it.

"Doesn't," John mumbles, his arm tight around Sherlock, squeezing him as if admonishing him. "You don't need to think about it."

"Not that easy."

John draws back far enough to see his face. "Why, are you trying to work something out?"

Sherlock thinks for a moment. "How do you feel, when you want to stop?"

"Just--" John laughs. "You know how, genius."

Sherlock nods slightly but doesn't reply, uncertain. He thinks about the last time he had sex, a year ago? No, longer now, before rehab, before John. It seems scarcely like something that could belong to the same family of experiences as this, and yet it is, the same actions, the same mechanics. Not the same impulses, not for him, and not the same outcome, but he must have been able to experience an analogous desire to John's-- in a purely practical sense alone it would have been impossible without it. Was there pleasure? There must have been. He can't picture it, can barely picture his partner, and for a moment he feels a kind of resentment towards that stranger, with whom he was able to summon something he wishes intensely he could manage now.

John rolls onto his back as Sherlock thinks, holding Sherlock's hand to his chest, as though he's reluctant to lose contact with him. 

"Will you tell me, anyway?" Sherlock asks him, and John shoots back an amused look. 

"Just like there's a cliff I don't want to go over," he says lazily, unconcerned. 

"Not in metaphor," Sherlock presses, shifting to lean over him, studying his face. John rolls his eyes, reaching up to slide his fingers slowly into Sherlock's hair, as if to distract him. 

"I can't give you a method," he says quietly. 

Sherlock nods slightly, faintly chastened. The pleasure at his astuteness is tempered by surprise at being understood so directly, before he himself had realised what he was asking. 

John smiles, seemingly amused by his silence. "It amazes me that this is the one area in your life where you're going to insist on strict conventionality." 

"All I have as a reference is convention," Sherlock says as he allows John tug him down again, settling again along his side. "Besides, we're all running the same operating system, theoretically speaking, so in this case convention could be--"

"Sherlock," John cuts him off, shifting onto his side to see his face properly. "What you're worried about is something I can handle, okay? I can handle it with one hand tied by my back, literally." 

Sherlock feels a burst of interest at that, speaks before he can rein it in. "Do you?"

"What?"

"Handle it."

John blinks, then laughs, rolling onto his back. "Sherlock..."

Sherlock continues to watch him, even as John looks away, seeming faintly unsettled all of a sudden. What is this in him, this desire to claw away at barriers the moment John erects them? Some misrouted impulse towards intimacy? 

He strokes John's arm and John looks back at him silently, his expression softer. Sherlock kisses his temple, breathes in the warm scent of his hair, closes his eyes as John slips his hand under his shirt to rest against his stomach. They lie like that, in silence, Sherlock understanding what the likely, undesirable result of continuing to press will be, but finding himself unable to stop nevertheless.

"How often?"

John groans, punching Sherlock's side gently. "No, Sherlock."

"Surely you can't be embarrassed?"

"No, you don't get to know everything about me."

"You know everything about me," Sherlock insists, earnestly, frowning at John's incredulous expression.

"It took you four months to tell me your pen-name, and even then under duress," he says accusatorially. "You never let me read what you're writing. You had a whole other life that you _never_ speak about."

"You know everything worth knowing," Sherlock backtracks. It's a shock to hear it, when to his eyes he feels he has been radically transparent, open enough to unsettle him when he thinks about it.

John shakes his head. "No."

"Do you use pornography?"

"Sherlock."

"Heterosexual or homosexual?"

" _Sherlock_."

"This isn't something I'll have trouble working out on my own," Sherlock says, not quite a threat, but enough for John to hit him again, and then, strangely, tuck himself close against his body, his face hidden against his shoulder. Sherlock's arm goes around him of its own accord, and he strokes his hair, his back through the thin, overwashed cotton of his loose t-shirt. He's already thinking about laundry cycles, shower length-- checking computer history is cheating, surely, and besides, there are methods to conceal activity of that sort. 

"Why do you want to know?" John mumbles against his shoulder.

"Why do I want to know anything? Just to know." Not entirely true, but close enough. His desire to know John is of a slightly different breed, as compulsive as his other curiosities but with an edge of self-protection, a desire to survey his battlefield as to avoid an ambush. Is there an edge of eroticism to it, as well? In a way he'd like that to be true. There is a kind of thrill at seeing something concealed, or at least seeing the outlines of its concealment, a whole new part of John's existence he is surprised hadn't occurred to him to investigate before. A repercussion of Sherlock's actions that occurs without him, hidden from him-- can he be blamed for being interested in that?

"I can't be the one who always needs you more," John says, not moving away. 

Sherlock laughs despite himself, at the ridiculousness of that idea, and John looks up.

"I'm not joking. I'm okay, with everything, but you have to let me have... I don't know. It's a vulnerable enough position as it is, being the one who wants more from you than you do of me, without that want being dissected as well. You know?"

"You don't know what I want of you."

John falls quiet, shakes his head and pulls back. Sherlock watches his face, John's eyes averted, and strokes his cheek, his hair, kisses his brow. 

"Is it always this terrifying?" Sherlock asks him, smiles a little as John laughs.

"It does seem unusually scary this time."

"You don't have reason to be scared." _How could you be, of something that belongs irrevocably to you?_

John spreads his hand at Sherlock's hip. "A month ago, if someone asked me, I'd tell them I would be happy to stay only a friend to you, if it meant having you around." He shrugs. "I don't think I'd say that still. But only because the reward has exceeded the risk, not because the risk itself has reduced."

Sherlock swallows. They're not ones for declarations, John and he. Something about him speaking that way, though, in frank words chosen with intent, is worth more to him than any love poem, any lyric. John looks up at him, Sherlock still struggling for a response, and pulls him close.

\---

When Sherlock returns home the next evening he smells food, and drifts in to the kitchen to circle John like a shark. Steam from furious pots on the stove is rising to fog the windows. John smiles when he sees him, sets a colander of washed snow peas in front of him. 

"Do these."

"Do?" Sherlock repeats, shaking the colander slightly, as if their secrets will offer themselves up under provocation. He hadn't been aware even of the extent of his culinary ignorance before John had arrived to stock and navigate the formerly mint-condition kitchen, and done it with a proficiency Sherlock had found mildly alarming. It wasn't seeing John's competence that had been unsettling-- he seems that way most of the time-- but rather the fresh reminder it served as of the vast difference between himself and the general population. A population who knows how to cook rice. 

"Come on," John sighs. He jostles Sherlock a little as he picks out a pea, does something incomprehensible to it with an air of demonstration, and moves back to the stove. Sherlock picks one up and sets it down again in a pantomime of cooperation. 

"How was your mystery meeting?" John asks him.

"I think we have a new client," Sherlock says, staring down at the colander.

"Do we?" John asks, emphasis on the _we_ , eyebrow raised.

"Would you rather me exclude you?"

"Who is it?"

"Scotland Yard." 

John laughs, glancing over at Sherlock as he makes some kind of adjustment to the stove. At Sherlock's silence he raises his eyebrows and crosses the room, relieving him of his duties by sliding the colander back to himself. Sherlock watches his hands as he snaps the tip of a bean and strips it of an attached string along its length. _How does someone come to know to do that?_  He notices the nails on John's right hand are bitten shorter than his left. Trouble with his research? Stress of another kind? Sherlock attempts to file it.

"Scotland Yard," John repeats, prompting. He makes a pile of beans, and a corresponding pile of bean scraps, in quick, economical movements. Sherlock finds himself staring fixedly at his right hand, trying, for the sake of domestic harmony, to shake it off.

"An inspector there had heard about the missing pearl case, and-- did you speak with your sister on the phone today?"

"What? No," John says. "Scotland Yard."

"Yes, wanted an opinion on a similar burglary-- your supervisor?"

"Did I speak with my supervisor?" John asks, pausing long enough to look up at Sherlock, the corner of his mouth quirking. 

"Yes. On the phone."

"No. What's wrong?"

"Your nails," Sherlock says, doing his best to seem dismissive, picking up a bean and attempting to replicate John's actions. 

John looks at them with a small frown, nodding a little. "Need to book that manicure," he says, his tone light, his look curious. 

"You don't bite them. But you bit your... non-dominant hand. The nails. I thought you, you hold your phone with your left, usually, which would--"

"Why are you so flustered?" John laughs, dropping the beans into the frying pan and shaking it.

"I know you hate it," Sherlock mumbles, and John sighs.

"I wouldn't be with you if I hated it." John's tone is warm, undeservedly sweet.

"Yesterday morning, you--"

"You have to see the difference between investigating how often I masturbate over you and this--" He waves his left hand. "Can't you?"

"It doesn't have to be... over me--" John saying it so bluntly has thrown him slightly, the image of it coming unbidden. "You can just give me a general number..."

John laughs, sweeping scraps into the bin. "I was on the phone to the scholarship office. There was an issue with my stipend, that's all."

"Do you need money?" Sherlock asks without thinking, and not for the first time feels a quiet kind of gratitude for John's goodness. It's a game he plays with himself, sometimes, in more pessimistic moments. What could John demand of him that he wouldn't immediately acquiesce to? Money? Take it all. Changes to his personal life? His bad habits? His professional life? Yes, yes, yes. And, the worst-- sex? With a broken heart, yes. 

"It's sorted," John says with a little smile. He's doing something mysterious at the stove, and Sherlock goes to him, watches over his shoulder. John leans back slightly, silently, tipping his head to the side as if to invite a kiss. Sherlock wraps his arms around his waist, bowing his head to kiss his clothed shoulder, his soft neck. 

"I wouldn't have believed it a year ago, if I was told I'd be happy to be sober, making dinner with the person I love," he mumbles into his shirt. As soon as he realises what he has said he feels a rush of panic. There's a stutter in John's movements, a tightening in his stomach, where Sherlock's hands are splayed. Pulse raised. 

"Sherlock..." John starts, his voice sounding faintly reproachful. Sherlock's heart throbs in his throat. "You are not making dinner."

Sherlock laughs brokenly and rests his forehead against John's shoulder, arms tight around him, taken back a little with the extent of his relief. John turns in his arms, smiling faintly as he strokes his hair with a steady palm, brushes a kiss to his cheek. 

"I'm happy about it too," he murmurs, holding Sherlock's gaze for a moment, then curling his fingers at his sides and leaning up into a kiss. Sherlock makes a soft sound, his hands immediately in John's hair, as if to hold him in place. He bows into the kiss, which grows deep, and slow, John's hands under his shirt, his body rocking forward into Sherlock's. 

John breaks away suddenly enough for Sherlock to feel off-kilter, and it's only as he sees him switch the stove off that he notices the burnt smell rising from it.

"I'm sorry."

"Caught it in time," John laughs, setting the pan down by the sink. 

Sherlock drifts to him again, almost in a daze, and when John turns he half-lifts, half-pushes him up onto a clear space on the bench, a little more roughly than he had intended. John goes serious, leaning on one palm as Sherlock kisses him again, his other hand fisted at his chest. It's not how he wants him-- Sherlock tugs John to the edge of the bench instead, guides his thighs around his hips so that they're pressed together. John gives an almost-whimper against his lips, of protest or approval Sherlock can't tell, but then seems to melt against him, letting Sherlock tip his chin back to kiss him with a kind of new hunger, his hands at his hair, his back, his thighs. The way John responds to his touch is like a kind of intoxicant, everywhere Sherlock lays his hand John exposes, arches, like a kind of perpetual offering up of himself, his every movement seeming to beg for more contact.

John drops his head with a sigh, exposing his neck. Sherlock kisses the length of it, his pulse hard and hot under his lips. John's hands rest against his chest, not quite pushing, but firm enough to be communicative. Sherlock doesn't need the warning, can feel the swollen press of his arousal against him, and without thinking he presses his hip against him more deliberately, causing a sharp intake of breath from John. 

"Please--" John whispers, almost too quiet to hear, seeming to fall forward into him, his lips at Sherlock's shoulder. "Don't do that..."

Sherlock gathers himself, pulling back far enough to see John, who is heavy-lidded, flushed. John sinks forward to close the gap Sherlock has put between them, and then rests his forehead on his shoulder with a breathless laugh. Sherlock shifts his hip against him again, experimentally, and John surges forward slightly, holding onto his forearms. 

"Please don't," he whispers, but presses forward with a roll of his hips himself, his breath hot against Sherlock's neck. Sherlock closes his eyes, not moving, unsure, but suddenly John makes the decision for him, sliding off the bench. 

Sherlock turns, his body cold, to watch John, who seems almost at a loss, casting his eyes around the kitchen. He feels his hair raise when John crosses the room to check the rice cooking, biting the nail of his right thumb as he goes. John seems to notice at the same time as Sherlock, and drops his hand. 

"Sexual frustration."

"That's a word for it."

"You bite your--"

"How'd you crack the case?" John is smiling, but there's a faint edge to his voice. He stirs the rice with quick movements.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock's arms hang by his sides, uselessly, now that John isn't filling them.

"It's--" John looks up, shaking his head. "Maybe we can't... I want to be close to you, you know? But then you treat my body like you own it, and it's... too much."

"I'm so sorry, John-- I thought you were okay, I thought you liked it--" Sherlock speaks quickly, feeling faintly nauseated.

John sighs and crosses back to him, taking both hands in his own and leaning close, kissing his jaw. "I fucking love it," he says quietly, his voice coming low in a way that makes Sherlock's skin prick up.

"You want to... slow down?" Sherlock manages, and John laughs, draws back.

"I suppose so," he says, looking although he's amused by the idea. "I just think I'm going a little crazy."

"So..."

"I don't know, I don't know," John says dismissively, squeezing Sherlock's hands. "We'll work it out. It's okay."

"What can I do?" Sherlock asks, guilt expanding like a stone in the pit of his stomach.

"Paper bag over your head," he jokes, his expression soft. "Your gorgeous head." He brushes his lips to Sherlock's knuckles, and without thinking Sherlock tips John's head up, and kisses his brow, his cheek in quick succession. John closes his eyes, taking a deep breath as he tips his head away. "Let's eat."

They do, cross-legged on the living room floor, the coffee table a makeshift replacement for their dining table, which is semi-permanently occupied and straining under the weight of their collective papers, books, laptops. Sherlock fills John properly in on Scotland Yard, the inspector he met there, who has access to some kind of a budget for consultants and an apparent motivation to outsource.

"We do need to talk about compensation," Sherlock says, watching John plow through his stir-fry.

"Hmm?" John mumbles, his mouth full, glancing up.

"You do a lot of work. For me. With me."

"You pay for a lot of things, though, it's fine," John takes a sip of beer. He seems faintly embarrassed, the same strange way he notices often in others, whenever money is discussed.

"Yes, but I don't pay for dinner as payment, I do it because I'm your... because I want to."

"You're my what?" John asks, his eyes with a glint in them, faintly smiling. He's teasing, but the question flusters Sherlock nonetheless.

"Yours," Sherlock answers, on an impulse, and John's smile fades, then immediately returns, wider still. He glances down at his plate with a quick little nod, biting the inside of his lip. Sherlock watches, stilled in a kind of adoration.

"I do think we need to talk about it, if not now, then--"

John makes a face that quietens him, and nods dismissively, picking up his fork. Sherlock has noticed that he never shows a particular interest in eating until food is in front of him, which he then zeroes-in on with a kind of mannered determination, as he has suddenly remembered his long-standing hunger. His appetite is something Sherlock is vaguely envious of, he who finds the constant requirements of sourcing and consumption a chore of the highest order. He made for a good addict, in that way.

"'M sorry about before," John says, not quite finished chewing as he speaks. "In the kitchen. I didn't mean to get weird."

Sherlock pauses a moment. "I've been selfish."

"If you have, then I have too," John says quietly. "Maybe I wish I could understand it better, you know? It's hard to-- when we were just, you know, it felt less..." He gives a quick, frustrated shake of his head, trailing off.

It takes Sherlock a moment to decipher. "It's getting worse for you?" 

"It's more. Recently. The way you are with me."

Sherlock nods. "I'm sorry." 

"It's just-- it's hard to understand. You asked me how it felt for me, yesterday, do you remember?"

"You didn't give a good answer," Sherlock says, doing his best to replicate the tone John uses when he's teasing him. John glances up with a cocked eyebrow, and then smiles wide enough to show his teeth, leaning back on his palms. 

"Okay, Holmes, outdo me."

Sherlock should have been expecting that. He looks down at his plate, which he has been absently separating into piles of its constitute elements, and casts desperately around for some frame of reference. "Well, when you're having your hair cut, or being shaved at the barber, it's pleasurable, isn't it? But it's not about sex... it's not something that builds, that you would need release from, it's the opposite. It's calming."

John makes a face. It's not the most flattering analogy, given. Nor the most accurate, not anymore. In their early weeks, Sherlock had been in a kind of stupor, being with John making him feel the closest he'd been to a narcotic calm since his hospitalisation. In honesty, there is something shifting; only slowly, but enough to unsettle him. There was nothing calm about what he had done to John in the kitchen.

"I refuse to believe a professional has been anywhere near that hair," John says, crossly, and Sherlock laughs. 

"I don't know, John, it's just so-- tied up with using." He says the last part in a rush, like he's ashamed to put it in words, reaching across the table to take John's beer. 

John nods and goes silent, his eyes hard on Sherlock as he takes a sip. "Like people have to give up drinking and smoking at the same time?" he suggests, and Sherlock shrugs.

"Yes, except..." He pauses. "If you had only ever smoked while drinking. And when you weren't drinking you found it repellent, and bewildering. And whenever you weren't drinking you'd think about why you did it, because perhaps the smoking wasn't always entirely consensual, or at least informed, because you were very confused, and very drunk. And maybe you'd realise that you only did it, you only smoked, out of a kind of... impulse to self-flagellate over your alcoholism. To acquiesce to something that makes you miserable as a kind of punishment. And that, in some ways, the desire avoid dealing with the consequences of smoking had been part of what had prolonged the alcoholism."

John is staring hard at him when he looks up, and he quickly shakes his head, unable to continue to meet his eyes. "And then, maybe you meet someone who makes the need for a drink less urgent. Who makes you forget how much of a constant struggle it was not to drink, before them. But, then, it turns out that the highest, the most important expression of your love for that person is considered by the world to be..." Sherlock laughs, at the ridiculousness of this, and at his nervousness. "Is considered to be smoking a cigarette with them. And maybe the thought of doing that thing, with that person, is so complicated, because that person wants to, very much, and you also want, very much, to be able to do anything they want. And maybe you think they would look very beautiful, smoking a cigarette. And even though you know, intellectually, that it's different, and even though you trust this person, still there's this sense of... fear, about bringing something that was so miserable into something so wonderful. And about what smoking again would do, or make you want to do, since smoking and drinking are so closely tied together..." Sherlock slowly, carefully, peels the label from John's bottle, as if its in-tact removal was a task of the highest importance. He feels faintly sick to his stomach, unwilling to see John's reaction, contemplating for a moment simply fleeing the room.

When John speaks, his voice comes from somewhere much closer than Sherlock was expecting, and as he looks up in surprise John is already kneeling at his side, arms going around his shoulders. Sherlock tenses, but allows it, closing his eyes as John kisses his temple. "Aren't you supposed to be a professional writer? That's the most laboured metaphor I've ever heard," he whispers, holding him tighter as Sherlock laughs, lowering his head to John's shoulder.

"I'll... submit a revised draft in a week," he mumbles into John's shirt, shifting a little to lean closer, almost weak with gratitude for him. 

"Hey," John guides Sherlock's chin up with a little nudge from his shoulder, forcing him to look at him. Sherlock does, with hesitance, and is rewarded with two gentle hands in his hair, and a serious expression. "I love you too."

Sherlock nods stupidly, letting John gather him close again, sinking against his body in a kind of numb joy. John strokes his back slowly, breathing into his hair, and Sherlock wishes desperately he had the presence of mind to take stock of his moment, gather what he can from John saying those words for the first time. Instead all he can do is curl his hands at his sides, focussing on each breath, and of the scent of him. His John.


	8. Chapter 8

Harry's flat is cramped, but seems to fill further still with her disapproval, until John feels the weight of it like a physical presence. He sits perched on a rickety stool at her bench, watching her sweep through her small kitchen, looking frighteningly like their mother as she assembles what must be the angriest tray of tea known to mankind from colourful, mismatched crockery.

"You remember he put you in hospital, you do remember that, don't you?" she snaps, her words punctuated by a rattle of cups.

"Don't be dense, Harry."

"Don't you be dense, that's what I'm trying to covey to you. I don't-- have you gone mad? Is this what's happening? He's terrible, and you're _straight_."

"Obviously not that straight." John drops off the bench to carry the tray to the living room, ignoring Harry's look of disgust.

"I wish you hadn't told me," she says as she follows him, laden with biscuits, a bottle of milk, and a grey and white kitten that John has never seen before, which she scoops up with one hand on her way. 

"You're sounding suspiciously like our parents." 

He immediately regrets it as she tenses up, anger compounding on her face. It's not for him to speak of, he understands, and agrees. Harry, who bore the brunt of everything by coming out, while John offered his quiet, treacherous solidarity from abroad, his participation in the following estrangement, and nothing more. 

Would it have made it easier for her, if he told her the truth about him, and told them, to have offered himself up as another target? And what could he have said, at the time? He suspects he might be curious? He had a girlfriend-- always had a girlfriend-- and it would have sounded ridiculous. Surely, he had thought at the time, a few drunken fumblings do not one's sexual identity make. But then, still, he knew, he did, and even though it was his nature to happily take what seemed the easier option available to him, to skirt along with a high school girlfriend, a university girlfriend, a postgraduate girlfriend, he always knew. And he should have said.

He makes Harry's tea for her as a kind of silent apology, sweet and diluted with milk and sugar, and the storm seems to pass as she settles on the couch. 

"How's your work?" she asks him. John nods.

"Well, I found this sixteenth-century writer--"

"On second thoughts, I don't care," Harry interrupts, kicking her slippers off and crossing her legs underneath herself as John hands her the tea. 

"It's going fine," John says, resigned. He pours a cup of black tea and sits by her in the armchair, looking around. He should be used to clutter, but even for him it's dramatic, her living room a sea of knicks-knacks on dusty books on antique furniture. "Have you ever thought of getting a cleaner?"

"Fuck off," she mutters as she blows on the surface of her tea. She picks up a packet of biscuits and tears into them, suddenly occupied in methodically dunking one after another. She looks a mess, but in a healthy way, eccentric instead of sick, and it's a constant relief to see her this way. Her hair has grown out, piled on the top of her head in what John assumes was intended to be a bun, and her long, diaphanous sundress reminds him of the curtain playclothes from _The Sound of Music_. Even her antagonism he's grateful for, evidence of her being present and sober enough to give a damn. "I really have to know, are you safe? This guy, he's-- he's off, you know?"

"You met him one time--"

"That's all I need," Harry insists, looking up. "I have a very finely-tuned sense for people. I'm like a dog. Besides, it was a drawn-out once. Hours. Days."

John shakes his head, smiling besides himself. "Maybe you should come over."

"Fuck no," Harry mutters. "To see you mooning over that lump up-close and personal, no thanks."

"Don't talk about him like that," John says irritably. She can insult him, but not Sherlock, who he suddenly feels strangely protective of.

The tea is strong, faintly spiced and apple-scented, something Harry had scooped in heaped teaspoons out of a jar. He reaches over to seize a digestive from the packet resting on her knee.

"Is he nice to you, at least?" she asks, relinquishing the biscuits by setting the packet on the arm of the couch between them. 

John tries not to smile, just nods again, eating with exaggerated attention towards the crumbs. 

"Good in bed?" she says through a mouthful, still chewing as she speaks.

"Oh," John hesitates. He isn't not sure if it'll harm poor Sherlock's reputation further to disclose. "We don't..."

Harry seems to choke. "What?"

"You don't want to know about that," John says quickly.

"I don't mind about hearing about you _not_ having sex, god," Harry says. "That's like music to my ears. So, you're just, like-- very close, creepy friends?" she asks, hopefully, and John laughs.

"No, we're very close, creepy... more than friends, I don't know," he says, shrugging quickly. "We just haven't--"

"You _are_ straight." Harry looks vaguely triumphant.

"I'm definitely not," John mumbles, reaching for another biscuit. 

"It's okay, John," Harriet adopts her big-sister tone, which always comes from her tinged with a kind of irony. "I'm sure these are confusing feelings-- you know, men suffer under the patriarchy, too. I know that you're raised to repress your feelings of closeness with other men, but you can care very much for your friend without that meaning you're gay..."

John bites back a laugh, chewing his lip as he looks down into his cup. He's glad she doesn't know, it feels wrong to even think of it in her presence, of the fog he's been living in, this unrequited need for him like a constant ache. "You know I've-- he's not the first-- I mean, you knew Robert..."

"You and _Robert_?" Harry asks in surprise, eyes widening. "No." Harry had come to visit, in the middle of it all, stayed for a week on a futon in John's flat. How could she miss it? He thinks back, with a small degree of hurt-- was Robert that casual with him, even then? That no one could even tell? "That's-- are you sure? Was it some weird asexual thing like this?"

"Kind of the opposite..." John mumbles into his tea, and Harry makes a face.

"And Sherlock _does_ know you're in a relationship..." she starts, a little patronisingly.

"Have you never just taken things slowly?" John snaps.

"What's the point," Harry says. She eats a biscuit in one laboured mouthful. "You _live_ together, how is it possible?" 

"It's fine." John looks down as the kitten reappears at his feet, attempting to claw at his trouser leg with claws too fine to find purchase. "Where'd you come from?" he asks as he leans to pick it up, his voice going automatically sing-song, as though it would be scared to be addressed in a normal tone.

"Found 'er." 

John drops the cat without thinking, and Harry tuts, sliding off the couch to gather it up and hold it, under some duress, against her chest in an exaggerated show of comforting it. 

"Don't be a fucking idiot, she's clean, I took her to the vet. I found her a month ago. She was in a cardboard box on the street, just her on her own, like in a cartoon... isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?" Midway through her sentence she abandons addressing John and speaks instead directly to the cat, holding it up to her face, letting it claw at tendrils of hair that hang perilously close to her eyes. Suddenly, shockingly, she drops it herself, turning away to sneeze for what seems to be an absurd length of time. When she looks back, John properly takes notice of the her red-rimmed eyes, the handkerchief tucked in her bra that she had been pulling out to swipe at her nose with since he had arrived. 

"Harry," he says in surprise. He hesitates at her immediate _don't say anything_ look, but he can't help himself. "Tell me you're not allergic."

"Got a cold," Harry says unconvincingly. She reaches for the cat again, but is caught in another bout of sneezing before she can catch it.

" _Harry_. Has this been going on a month?"

"It's getting so much better, I'm really building up immunity," Harry says, her voice coming hoarser as she blows her nose.

"This is an improvement?" John asks in concern, picking up the cat to keep it away from her. It climbs, lightweight, up his arm to sit strangely gripped at the nape of John's neck, forcing him to hunch forward to keep it balanced. Harry, wracked with a last few sneezes, retakes her seat on the couch, rubbing at her eyes. "Harry, you can't keep her."

Harry looks up at him with a expression that seems vaguely sly in its pitifulness, and John realises with dawning horror why she invited him around with such urgency. "I don't know what to do, I love this little thing, she depends on me..." she starts, and seemingly on cue the cat resettles on John's shoulder, purring against his neck. John sighs.

"I can't--" he starts to protest, and she nods with the kind of resigned expression that comes easily, when someone knows they've already won.

\---

Mrs. Hudson sets a jam sandwich in front of John, dismissing his _there's really no need_ with a wave of her hand. 

"So, I hate to ask, it's just that she's really suffering, and--"

"Now, technically speaking, I do think the agreement Sherlock signed specified no pets, but..." Mrs. Hudson smiles as though amused by such a formality. She looks into the towel-lined cardboard box John had carried nervously home on the Tube, and the cat seems to perform as if waiting for its moment in the spotlight, swiping gently at her offered hand with a small meow. "I'd be more concerned about Sherlock if I were you, John. I don't see him as an animal lover, that one."

"No," John agrees. _But I have means._ "I'll talk to him. I'm sure we can come to an agreement."

Mrs. Hudson doesn't release him until the sandwich is finished, and two milky cups of tea drunk, while she torments the cat with a variety of dangling objects for it to lunge, single-minded at. 

"Does it have a name?" Mrs. Hudson asks as John finally heads for the stairs, cat re-boxed as not to spook Sherlock. 

"Well, she was calling it Simone," John says, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

"Not suitable for a cat," Mrs. Hudson says, almost sadly. John nods and frowns in amused agreement. 

He peeks into the box, as if the cat could contribute, perhaps name herself. It looks back up at him, curled unhappy and silent in its confinement. "I'll get back to you on it."

"Good luck," Mrs. Hudson says. She looks meaningfully towards their flat, as though she can see through the walls to where Sherlock would sit, ears burning.

When he arrives upstairs Sherlock is working at the dining room table. He glances up with a distracted nod as John sets the box down and goes to open a window, the air hazy with cigarette smoke.

"Why have you bought an animal into our pristine workspace?" Sherlock mumbles, staring fixedly at his screen. He appears to be scrolling rapidly through pages of text without a discernible endpoint. When John goes to him he closes the laptop case and looks up, frowning.

"Let me explain..."

"Must you?"

"Not if you say it's okay." John smiles, leaning against Sherlock with his hip, nudging him.

"Okay," Sherlock says tonelessly, opening the case again and turning his attention back to his work. 

Sherlock doesn't acknowledge John as he leaves for the pet store, nor upon his return, except to eye warily the bags of supplies that he drops on the couch. John's afternoon then melts into a sea of pet care-related web searches and unpackaging of his newly-acquired paraphernalia, so much so that he forgets Sherlock's presence entirely. It comes as a kind of relief, the working out details of the care and feeding of this creature enough to take his mind of himself, and of Sherlock.

In the afternoon, he's almost surprised to find Sherlock away from his makeshift workstation, standing in the centre of the living room. He is engaged in what seems to be a kind of staring contest with the cat, who holds its ground, as though she is as wary of him as he is of her.

"I've changed my mind," he says around his cigarette, not breaking his gaze. 

"Too late." John sits in front of the cat with his saucer of milk from the kitchen, trying to coax her to it.

"Why, John?" Sherlock sounds almost petulant. He's slippered, in rolled up shirtsleeves, looking rumpled in a way rarely seen by the outside world. Only by John, who quietly loves it.

"It's Harry's."

"Take it back."

"You should see her, Sherlock, she's a mess with allergies..."

"All the more reason." He drops onto the couch, stabbing the cigarette out, and surveys them with a sour expression. "Does it have a name?"

"Why, would you like naming rights?" John asks, sweetly, looking up at him with a grin.

"There's only one proper name for a cat," Sherlock says decisively, like it's common knowledge.

"Is there."

"Cattarina."

John laughs, dropping forward to watch the cat as it circles the saucer with suspicion. "Bet you wish she left you in your damn box," he whispers to it.

"What is she calling it?" Sherlock asks, with a tone of resignation, as though he knows he'll hate the answer.

"Simone."

"Nina?"

"de Beauvoir, apparently..."

To John's surprise Sherlock gives a little shrug, a toss of his head, and nothing more. _They're too alike, is the problem_ , he thinks, smiling despite himself. He slides over to Sherlock, resisting the urge to climb into his lap, unsure if he'll be accepted by Sherlock in his current mood. Instead he sits by his feet, leans against his legs. 

"Did you get some work done?"

"I think so," Sherlock says, sounding distracted. When John looks up at him he sees his eyes are fixed still on the cat, who seems to have decided the milk is fit for her consumption. 

"It's a cat, it's not going to get in your way," he chides him.

"We'll see," Sherlock mutters.

John rests his head against Sherlock's thigh. He wants to distract him, coax him back from wherever his work has left him. It's not an impulse he's proud of, this desire for Sherlock to pay attention to him, and to be happy to do so, even when he knows it's hopeless. "Can I make it up to you?"

"You're too soft-hearted, John," Sherlock says, his tone strangely harsh to John's ears.

"Would you prefer I wasn't?"

"No. But the problem is, you think you aren't." 

John shakes his head and moves to his feet. There's only so much ill-humour he can take in one day, between Sherlock and his sister, and he's tired. He scoops up the cat, who gives a yelp of protest, and carries it to his room to work.

It's gone dark when he hears a knock on his door, John at the small desk in his room, managing to channel his irritation into a few solid hours of drudgery.

"Order in," he says without looking up, his voice muffled by the highlighter he's holding between his teeth, trying to mark places in several books at once.

Sherlock doesn't reply, and after a few moments when John looks up he's almost startled to see him still there, half in shadow in the dim hall. 

"Everything alright?" he asks, watching the cat make a break for freedom past Sherlock's feet. He pushes his books away and slouches in his chair, rocking it back on two legs.

"Are you angry?"

John shakes his head. "Just thought I'd wait it out."

"Me?" Sherlock sounds surprised.

John frowns. He can tell the sea has changed, that Sherlock won't rise to any fight that he picks, which makes him want to revel in his own self-indignation while he can do so with little consequence. "The cat's staying," he says, not able to rustle up too much emotion, but trying anyway. "If it's between letting Harry make herself sick, or breaking her heart giving it away, or mildly inconveniencing you, she wins. If that's being soft-hearted, then I'd question your definition, because I think that's just being a decent person."

Sherlock comes inside and closes the door behind him. "I understand." His voice is quieter. John looks up at him, suddenly very aware of the enclosed space, Sherlock's expression, and his bed between them. "You've worked hard. Come and have a drink with me."

John tries not to spring to his feet with the enthusiasm he feels. Instead, he makes a kind of show of arranging his books, marking his places, and then drifting over with what he hopes is a convincing nonchalance. When he reaches Sherlock, however, he's caught, turned, and pressed against the bedroom door with a kind of animal quickness. Every nerve seems to come online at once, and John lets out a small sigh of pleasure as Sherlock steps forward to press him against the door. Sherlock holds his wrist in one hand, his jaw in the other, and lowers his head to kiss him, possessively, so that everything else seems to flicker out except Sherlock's tongue, moving slow and deep against his own, the press of his body, and the two hands that hold him in place.

When John reaches for him Sherlock pins the second wrist as well, and straightens so that John is forced to tip his head up to maintain contact, stretching out against him. He's vaguely aware of a soft moan that comes from low in his throat, and at it Sherlock seems to grow fiercer, hands tightening, the kiss intensifying without reprieve. It's too much. Every shift of Sherlock's body against him sets off ripples that pool low, John growing steadily weak with it.

"We said we wouldn't do this," John whispers urgently, barely clear of Sherlock's mouth, but is immediately silenced by another kiss, gentler this time. Sherlock drops his wrists, moving his hands to John's waist in a kind of caress instead, and kisses his neck.

After a moment Sherlock ducks his head, as if chastened by an invisible something, and moves away. John follows him to the lamplit living room in a kind of daze, his eyes fixed on him, as though it could compensate for the way his body aches for him to come close again. 

He settles on the couch to accept a large glass of something unidentifiable that Sherlock has poured from a bottle with a Cyrillic label. It's strong enough to burn, but Sherlock sips it like water, and settles by him. 

"I'm sorry if I was harsh earlier," Sherlock says quietly. He's watching the cat under the coffee table, who is eyeing them both warily, tensed as though ready to run. 

John drifts close to Sherlock. He has to replay the sentence in his head to digest the meaning, and nods, then shakes his head. "I don't need life advice," he says, but his tone doesn't quite match the sentiment. Sherlock looks at him, seeming curious, and under his scrutiny John drains his glass. Sherlock refills it immediately. 

There's something faintly gentlemanly, indulgent about him, when his attention is on John, in a way he can never quite get used to, standing so in contrast to his usual state of undisguised irritation and distraction. It's all the more sweet for it, of course, the way he picks up the bill, holds the door, keeps an eye on his drink, all done quietly, automatically, and only ever for him.

"It's a handsome cat," Sherlock says, like a peace offering. 

"She's okay," John murmurs. "I should have checked with you. You live here too."

"I do," Sherlock says, sounding faintly amused. Their glasses are refilled a third time, dangerously, but John can't muster a protest. Sherlock drains his own and turns to him. His dark lashes seem even thicker in the low light, making his gaze seem gentler, less piercing, so that John can hold it without wavering. Sherlock lowers his head closer, a lock of hair falling forward, and cups John's cheek, brushes a kiss to the other. "You should tell me what's bad for me to do."

 _Nothing_ , John thinks wildly, but it isn't true. He brushes Sherlock's hair back, not quite steady, intensely aware of the mass of his body so close to his own, and of his hands that come to rest on John's shoulder, his knee. 

"The problem is that you've worked me out too fast," John says, almost under his breath.

"I'm not being that selfless," Sherlock's voice is soft. John swallows and sets his glass down. _We're compatible in every way but the one._  

He shifts forward and strokes Sherlock's hair, watching his fingers disappear into the warm mass of it. Sherlock lowers his head with a sigh, his eyes falling closed in an oddly vulnerable expression. It buoys him to see Sherlock react openly; any reminder that he doesn't act only out of a desire to please him. 

"What exactly are we drinking?" John mumbles, grinning as Sherlock smiles, opening his eyes slowly watch him again. 

"Do you like it?"

"Yes." He feels himself grow warm under Sherlock's gaze, which intensifies.

"John." Sherlock's voice makes it hard to tell if it's a question or a statement, but before it can bother him Sherlock shifts and moves John back against the arm of couch. When John tries to make space aside him Sherlock holds, leaning over him instead, his eyes dark.

John's attention goes strangely microscopic, as if every sense has become razor-sharp and attuned only to him. He becomes intensely aware first of the faint graze of Sherlock's jaw, then the warm waves of his breath against his skin, then the plastic of Sherlock's shirt button that he rolls between his fingers, and against his fingertips the heat of his skin hidden behind it. He closes his eyes, steadying his breath. 

"Do you think about me, John?" Sherlock says softly, John feeling the words against his neck as much as he hears them.

"Of course." It takes him a moment to understand that the question was more specific, and then a moment more to understand its specificity. He swallows, turning his head to kiss Sherlock's hair silently. 

"I don't want to notice, I hope you understand that. It's not deliberate, but, John, you're..." Sherlock raises his head to see him, and for the first time John realises that the alcohol has had the same effect on him. He overestimates Sherlock's tolerance, sometimes, but mistakenly. It's never been his vice of choice. "It's very difficult for me not to notice you."

"We are talking about the same thing right now," John starts, and at Sherlock's silence he nods dumbly, his pulse in his throat. He should have known this was coming. "Sherlock... I've told you, you don't have to think about that."

"But I do, often," Sherlock says. "I know you're not happy with how we are--"

"That's not true," John protests, but Sherlock interrupts him with a shake of his head.

"I know I make it worse. I take whatever I want from you, and you don't ask for what you need in return. And still I want more than that, I want to know..." Sherlock sighs and lowers his gaze. "I want to know every possible thing."

"It sounds like you do." John intends it as a joke, but it comes intentionally sounding faintly aggrieved. 

"I know frequency. Correlation between-- external factors. I know that certain--" Sherlock seems to reconsider and falls quiet for a long moment. "Do you think about me?"

 _Is this possessiveness, or just that instinctual curiosity?_ John wonders, but before realising himself he answers, "Yes."

Sherlock seems to soften, kissing John's brow-- as comfort or reward he's not sure. John slides his hands to Sherlock's shoulders, runs his palms over them, taking a deep breath. 

"You don't want me to know," Sherlock says, mildly, as though merely stating the established facts. 

"It's... I think it would be easier for you if you didn't have to know. But it's moot, because it's you, and probably my trying to keep it from you just leaves more evidence." 

He isn't sure what is worse, the need or the guilt he feels for it. It's not a guilt about sex itself, he thinks, he hopes, that bothers him, more the conviction that Sherlock would be hurt by his preoccupation with it. After all, how could he feel anything about guilt at how he longs for something that pains Sherlock to even talk about? How he imagines, and receives pleasure from imagining, frequently, desperately, the person he loves in situations that would repulse him in reality?

Sherlock thinks him soft-hearted, but he wonders what he would think if he knew of its steel-hungry part that raises its head when he's alone, to summon images that make him flush with disappointment afterwards. While it doesn't hurt Sherlock, not directly, he knows, what he does to _handle it_ , it stands so removed from the reality of their relationship, and from that calm intimacy that had seemed in their early weeks to be all he would need, to feel still like a kind of betrayal. Back then he had been almost struck dumb with the absolute joy, the absolute relief to have him, and them, together, finally, that he wasn't prepared for the desire. It had at first seemed innocent, an extension of months of adoration that had finally seen sunlight, but had started to take him over, slowly at first, but steadily, like a infestation of weeds.

He thinks often of that night over dinner, Sherlock struggling with obvious care to explain himself to him, who in reality feels he deserves nothing further than an _I don't want to_. And it seems a kind of absurdity to him, that Sherlock has become the more open one, the one who attempts with great effort to make himself understood by him, while John hides everything.

"So you can work out everything but what's in my head, is that what's going on?"

"Exactly, John," Sherlock says insistently, his gaze growing fond. "You understand..."

"Doesn't mean I'm going to play along." 

"Please," Sherlock says low against John's ear, in a way that John must have imagined a hundred times. A tone that leaves no room for demurring, one that makes him feel a pile of dead leaves whipped up in a sudden breeze. 

"You," he says again, slightly breathless. "That's all."

He can see Sherlock's disappointment, feel it as though he was absorbing it through his skin. Sherlock gives a slight nod and takes a breath as if to speak, but John beats him to it.

"What is this, some kind of exposure therapy?" Has he been wrong, he's starting to wonder, is the narrative he's constructed exactly just that? Is he more invested in some semi-understood notion of Sherlock's chastity than even Sherlock? Too willing to see Sherlock as badly hurt, and John as his protector. He turns his head away, but not quickly enough to miss Sherlock's frown.

"Tell me about before, then."

"Before you?" John asks, surprised.

"It's not about me. It's wanting to know you." Sherlock moves back to give him space to move away, as though he had sensed that John was contemplating it. Released, John sits up.

"Sherlock, it's not interesting, you know, I'd just think of my girlfriend, or..." At least he can be honest about that-- he'd never felt compelled to develop such a rich inner life until Sherlock pulled him into his orbit.

"I'll never be able to picture you with a girlfriend." Sherlock moves to pour another round of drinks, but John intercepts, plucking his hand from midair and guiding it to his lap instead.

"That's because you think I didn't exist before I met you," John says, fondly, leaning against him. "Sometimes I wonder if you've achieved object permanence yet."

"No, I have the opposite problem," Sherlock says quietly. He stares at the bottle as if attempting to summon to him by telekinesis. "I can't get rid of you. You leave the room, and yet..."

John makes a soft sound of mock-protest. When Sherlock says something sweet-- no matter how oblique-- John is sometimes struck by the thought, _this is my boyfriend_ , as though the changed core of their relationship had become briefly obscured by the many constants. But is he himself ever sweet, he wonders suddenly, or does he expect Sherlock to merely intuit his weakness at knees, his fluttering heart? The thought is unsettling, and he frowns, trying to summon up something to offer Sherlock in return, pressing closer against him.

"Have you ever seen Robert Morris' pink felt piece, Sherlock?" he asks quietly.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow, then shakes his head slightly. "I can't recall."

"The idea is that the work is made up of felt scraps that are dropped on the floor in a gallery space-- what I mean is that even though the constituent pieces themselves are the same, each time they fall in a different way, make different forms. So that the final sculpture involves elements that are not entirely... under the control of the creator." 

Sherlock doesn't reply except for a small nod, his eyes on John.

"Well," John goes on, frowning a little at his odd choice of analogy. "If you want to know what I think about... I know how you touch me, that's one piece. I know how your mouth feels on me. I know your expression when you're pleased with me. I know what it's like when you're rough with me, and when you're gentle." John pauses. "So, they find their own shape."

Sherlock is silent for a long moment, long enough for John to wonder if he said something wrong-- too self-censored, not censored enough?

When Sherlock turns back to him John finds himself giving a barely-audible _sorry_. Sherlock shakes his head, mumbling something with the word _love_ in it at the same volume, then standing and pulling John to his feet at the same time. John laughs a little as he sways, slightly unsteady from the alcohol, reaching for Sherlock for balance. 

"Your place or mine?" Sherlock asks quietly, steadying John with a hand to the small of his back.

"We really need an our place," John mumbles, but it doesn't matter. It's all theirs.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUCH a slow update, my apologies. Shortish chapter this time, but updates should be much more frequent from here on in.

Sherlock is jostled awake by a weight on the bed which pauses, then envelopes, undeterred by his groan of protest and his turned back. Sherlock swats half-heartedly, face pressed into the pillow, but John settles against him like a heavy blanket, his lips at the back of his turned neck, his jaw.

"Why didn't you tell me?" John is mumbling against his hair. "Congratulations..."

When Sherlock opens his eyes he sees a steaming mug next to him on the bedside table. He reaches for it with both hands, like a man to a life preserver-- John is dislodged in the process, but in life one can't have it all. 

"Explain slowly," he mumbles against the rim, slouched, half-propped on the table. 

"The longlist." John sounds slightly bewildered. 

"Something good?"

"The Booker, you-- how do you not know this?"

The tea clears some of the sluggishness away with each mouthful, as if its a physical presence being displaced, and before realising he has almost finished the mug. He realises now why he had to turn his phone off yesterday from all the ringing, and feels strangely embarrassed-- not for his agent, who knows not to expect much by now, and has tolerated worse, but for John, who for some reason still treats him as though he's a professional. 

"Good for them. They finally show some sense." He was aiming for nonchalance, but lands somewhere in petulance.

John laughs. "How did you not know?" he asks again.

"How do _you_ know?"

" _Your guide to the Booker longlist_." John appears to be reading from something, and when he sets the mug down and turns he sees he that has his tablet propped in his lap.

Sherlock pulls the covers over his shoulders and slides to lie down. He's close enough to John that he hopes he'll come to him, but John appears engrossed. Sherlock watches him with lidded eyes instead, something about the line and set of his shoulders suddenly infinitely fascinating.

" _One effect of this year's longlist is the conformation that A.C. Smith is, in fact, a resident of either the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe. While barely narrowing it down by normal standards, for readers of this notoriously reclusive author this may amount to news. Although the author is commonly rumoured to be a British male, Smith's fans have never received official confirmation of gender, nationality or age. Mysteries aside, Smith's second novel, _Turn_ , could serve as dark-horse contender for this year's prize_, uh, blah blah... _short, gem-like "lit-crime" novel was critically praised on publication for its clockwork-intricate plot and sparse, evocative prose. What _Turn_ may lack in sales figures, it makes up for in its dedicated cult following. Fans have dedicated themselves to untangling further the multiple layers of mysteries within the novel, some going as far as attempting to decode what they believe are codes hidden in--_ "

"Alright," Sherlock mumbles. "Don't torment me."

"The code thing?"

"Nothing against codes, but..." Sherlock pauses. "Ridiculous."

John abandons the tablet and pulls away the blanket separating them, shifting to lean over Sherlock.

"Hey," John says insistently when Sherlock attempts to look away, his gaze steady. "You don't have be nonchalant about it. I'm proud of you."

Sherlock shrugs slightly, but as he looks up at John he knows his expression must give away more than he'd like. The concept of pride is a strange one, foreign-- has someone been proud of him before? To be close enough to experience another's achievements as if they were one's own. He's experienced admiration, jealousy, even, but this, the implied intimacy of it, is something new. 

John's mouth quirks at the edges at Sherlock's silence, his fingers light at his shoulder. He's leaning over him with a look that somehow turns every verb in Sherlock's mind into the passive, the kind of expression he doesn't see often, all the more to daze him when he does. John, quietly possessive, quietly sexual, in a way that draws out an interest that quickly curdles into the familiar anxiety. 

How many people have looked up at him while he wears that same expression-- he attempts to turn off this line of thought as soon as it surfaces-- the girlfriends, the boyfriends? Which is worse? Both have their particular barbs and sharp edges.

John lowers his head to the crook of Sherlock's neck and kisses him there, his palm spread firm against his chest. "Do you want to eat breakfast?" he mumbles close to Sherlock's ear, in a tone that would seem to invite cliches; an, _I want you first_ or, _I'm hungry for something else_ , but Sherlock is frozen in a kind of self-loathing-based paralysis, and suddenly John is already moving away, clearly unaware of the squall he sent blowing in. 

As soon as he loses contact he wants it again, and manages a kind of clumsy lunge to pull John to him. John settles with a small huff of surprise, at Sherlock's side this time, to watch him with a faint air of curiosity. 

"It's Saturday so... you can stay in bed longer," Sherlock says lamely, as though their schedules ever factor in the concept of a weekend. John seems to accept it, however, and smiles lazily, his eyes briefly falling closed as Sherlock brushes hair back from his brow. 

"You'll be selling some books."

"I doubt they'll remember where to send the cheque, it's been so long." As he speaks the first rush of the reality of the situation, the implications, rolls in. He's been on thin ice for a time now with almost all his professional relationships-- the bad behavior, the rehab, the long radio silences. It was never spoken, but silently acknowledged, that his next manuscript would be the difference between retaining his agent, his publisher into the future or starting from scratch. Not anymore. For a moment the relief of it is almost intolerably sweet. Like a card being flipped to reveal an ace, suddenly all pressure, all performance anxiety changes a sense of power ridiculous for being so unearned. He'll be needed now. They'll fight to retain him, these small timers. 

"How could you not know..." John is mumbling, tracing his fingers along the hem of Sherlock's shirt sleeve.

"It's not out of nowhere. It was mentioned, but... as such a long shot as to be not really possible."

"Hm," John nods, raising his eyes to meet Sherlock's. "Should we celebrate?"

Sherlock can't help but smile. "How, John?"

"Just... we could do something. Something you like." He pauses. "Go somewhere."

"We go everywhere I like anyway."

"Hopeless," John sighs. When Sherlock touches his cheek his eyes slide closed, his fingers drifting to Sherlock's waist. Sherlock takes it as his cue to slide closer, pressing his lips to where his fingers had touched him, then the corner of his eye, his brow. "You can think about it."

"Seems strange to demand a celebration on top of dumb fantastic luck--"

"Wasn't," John says, his eyes opening to form a kind of a chastising glare, but before he can disagree further Sherlock kisses him. To go further down that road is uncomfortable, to reflect objectively on one's own luck, for isn't it simply the same terrifying stroke of luck that John is here too? That in itself would drive someone to believe, really believe, in fate and all its reassurances, because the alternative is intolerable, that they could more easily have never crossed paths, Sherlock and the one person, full stop, for him. 

John sinks his hand into Sherlock's hair, and begins to slide his thigh around Sherlocks'-- then seems to reconsider and moves back slightly, another one of his tiny adjustments, ones he wouldn't assume Sherlock is painfully cataloging. Sherlock stops him, this time, guides John's leg around him, then runs his hand along it slowly, letting himself study John's face until the urge to kiss him grows too strong. When he does, John sinks onto his back, tugging Sherlock with him, curling his fingers at Sherlock's shoulders. His kiss is slow, coaxing, until Sherlock loses himself and presses him back into the mattress, kissing him deeply enough to hear him moan low in his throat, his vaguely helpless moan, one that is always left unanswered. Sherlock starts to draw back, but John murmurs wordlessly, leaning up to close the space between them.

"Please. I promise I won't--" he mumbles, his hands stroking Sherlock's hair, his shoulders, then gripping when Sherlock sinks dazedly to the heat of his mouth again. Possibly it takes not having sex to realize how penetrative a kiss can feel, Sherlock's tongue stroking deep into John's mouth, John clutched against him. 

"Like this?" Sherlock murmurs against John's lips, his only reply a fierce kiss in return, both of John's hands in his hair. Sherlock runs his hands over John's chest, and when John tips his head back to sigh he lowers his head to his throat, kissing him gently there. Sherlock can read him well enough by now to anticipate his _we shouldn't_ s, tries to slow down in time for them to not be required, but today John watches Sherlock through lidded eyes when he draws back, then stills him with two hands spread at his shoulder blades, drawing Sherlock close again.

"No?" John says, his voice soft, lips barely grazing his cheek, then his unshaven jaw. 

"You... John," Sherlock says with fading coherence, drifting into another slow kiss, John's hands warm under his shirt now, smoothing a path along his back.

John murmurs a shushing sound. He begins to rise off the pillow, then drops again with a small sigh as his phone buzzes shockingly in the pocket between them. Sherlock props himself enough to allow John to fish it out of his pajama pants. 

"Lestrade."

"He always calls me first."

"Maybe it's a personal call," John says, grinning widely. "I mean, oops, this thing here isn't exclusive, is it?" he says as he answers, then pauses. "Hi, Greg... no, nothing, I was just talking to Sherlock-- yes, he's alive and kicking-- is your phone off?" John asks, covering the receiver. "Do you want him?"

\---

Even as John charges away from him, Sherlock works it over, barely registering the street back to their hotel. _Female. Late-thirties. Blonde hair dyed black. Long dress, Aztec pattern. Sandals. Not much left of the face._ A car honks violently at him as he steps blindly off the curb. _Smoker. Worn Kristeva paperback, half-read the desk. Foreign language dictionaries on the shelf. Sculpture on bookshelf; geometric, bronze-- must ask John. ___

As they make their way to their rooms (John defeated in his retreat by the ancient lift in the lobby, coiled tense and silent at his side as he waits), Sherlock finds it difficult to believe that five hours ago John was sneaking his hand into Sherlock's in the back seat of a police escort vehicle, looking at him with that private oxytocin smile.

Given, he hadn't relayed specifics of Lestrade's call to him, but can he be blamed for that, given how accurately he was able to predict John's reaction to the body? No-- that is unfair-- not the body. The body John had regarded with strangely professional attention, unwavering. John's reaction was to their presence at a crime scene with a body. 

_This isn't for us, Sherlock._ But it is, so incredibly for us, John, don't you see? Don't you want to do something urgent, immediate-- not the insurance scams, art thieves, missing persons, the decades old cold cases that blow in from Christ knows where to their flat. 

"May I come in?" Sherlock asks in the hallway, regretting immediately the sarcasm-tinged formality of it. John rolls his eyes, leaving the door open for Sherlock behind him. The room is cool, curtains almost entirely closed, causing the sunlight to stream through in one golden wedge. It catches John where he stands, making him seem to glow, almost incandescent, in his anger. 

"John--" 

"Listen to me. You're not a bloody homocide detective, Sherlock." 

"We've investigated murders before." 

"Not deliberately. You working out that poor mama Lincoln didn't fall accidentally from that hotel window five years ago. Not when there's--" 

"Something real at stake?" John tosses his head to the side, clearly trying to avoid a nod. It stings. Quite a lot, actually. "They called me, John." 

"And you didn't think it appropriate to let me know the details of that call. Just _an incident at a university out of town_. That's all I need to know, is it?" 

Sherlock looks around the room, calms himself in the details for a moment. Gloom aside, the room is almost shockingly feminine, everything doilied, floral, soap-smelling. There is much to be seen in a hotel room, all the more delicious for the space's supposed impersonality. The drug binges, one night stands; here, the one small, inexpertly-repaired trace of a deliberately lit fire. 

He hadn't thought it out. It's an arrogance of sorts, to forget that John isn't like him. To think he would be seduced into acceptance once he sees it, the great possibility, the problem to be solved. No; the real John has his arms crossed, waiting for a reply. 

"I don't know what to say." _Let me get back to work._ It would be easier if he wasn't in stomach-turning, reason-destroying love. He could be at the station with a cup of instant coffee, digging, waiting for the autopsy report. 

"It's not that I don't think you're not capable, Sherlock," John is saying. "But you're other things, too. You're impulsive, and excitable, and obsessive to the point of forgetting your surroundings. Which is a wonderful thing, except I had to physically restrain you from plowing through an active crime scene without so much as a pair of gloves on. Do you understand?" 

"They would have stopped me if I--" 

"Sherlock. This isn't an Agatha Christie. When you catch--" John pauses a moment at that. "If it goes to trial, a lawyer will be paid very well to catch anything you do wrong. It's one thing to look over case files, it's another to-- you're an author. You're not trained." 

"They called me," Sherlock says again, dumbly. 

"Fine, they apparently call in civilians to investigate homocides. Truly a credit to our nation's police force." John says, pacing. "And not telling me? _Deliberately_ not telling me?" 

"You _don't_ think I'm capable." 

" _You_ don't think my presence is anything more than a bloody afterthought." 

They stand in silence for a long moment, John tense, avoiding his eyes. Suddenly all his potential energy erupts to kinetic, and Sherlock braces himself. 

"You seem to have misunderstood my part in this," he's saying fiercely. "I come with you because it's fun for me. It's interesting. And because, although you'll never bloody say so, but I'm of help to you. But all this doesn't mean I'm _actually_ your fucking assistant, Sherlock, no matter what we tell clients. I'm not going to be second in charge, your sidekick. Especially not now, not while I'm sleeping in your bed, you can't say you love me while at the same time--" 

"I do." 

John ignores his protest. "I get all the information you get, and I get a say. And if that's too much to ask, then do what you like, and count me out." John is heading to the door now, picking up his room key. "I do have a sodding thesis to write, you know." 

The door slams, and for a long moment Sherlock stares at it, heart pounding absurdly. _No wedding ring. No photos on desk. Cat owner. Lactose intolerant._

_Two entry points-- desk and low window. Window unforced._

_Count me out._


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My god, am I finally earning this too optimistic explicit rating? I'm so shy about this you guys.  
> By the way this is part two of the previous chapter, still Sherlock's POV.

It's long dark by the time Sherlock leaves the station, prowling until he finds John in a pub near the hotel. Inside it's dim, giving the impression of being somehow submerged, full of dark wood and worn, mismatched seating; a less studied version of the kind of places John prefers in London. John is at the bar, deep in conversation with a woman who, given their surroundings, appears shockingly urbane. After the unexpected rush of jealousy, it's almost amusing, the lovely pair of them having come together like magnets through the slouched swarm of red-cheeked drunks. Without thinking, Sherlock takes a seat near the entrance and watches, half hidden by a rack of coats. Identical drinks, whiskey. Her interest in him radiating off her, one sharp heel hooked easily on a support of John's stool. John, meanwhile-- Sherlock lets his eyes linger on him, studied enough in his face to read it from a distance. There's that damned indiscriminate warmth, easy smile, engagement. But, wonderfully, thrillingly, there is also reserve, a slight angle away on his stool, an almost calculated amount of friendly eye contact, in direct contrast to her own unyielding, honeyed gaze.

Who is she? Their own age. A student; inexpensive clothes merticulously chosen to give the appearance of a more disposible income. Tennis player. An out-of-towner, here for the university, sore for friends. Suffocatingly average. 

Suddenly, there's activity. John leans in, nods towards her almost-empty glass. Sherlock can almost hear him: _another?_ She looks, too, at her glass, then at him, slowly, lowered lashes. _What about a change of scenery?_ , surely. Lacquered fingertips at John's wrist that travel to his elbow, a cocked head, a smile hesitant enough to be genuine.

John, too, smiles; slowly enough to make Sherlock's heart drop (that cruel thing, that traitor), but then he speaks, and from her widened eyes and profound blush Sherlock knows the sentence must have included the word _boyfriend_. She's apologising, shaking her head, swiping hair from her cheek, and he's laughing, just a little, one treacherous hand briefly on her bare knee, and then-- was it an apology? Or a clarification? _Not boyfriend, not really, we don't sleep together_ \-- no, Sherlock makes himself stop, his heart pounding absurdly at the thought. It's a logical error, classic availability heuristic, to assume there would be a betrayal simply due to how often Sherlock tortures himself by imagining it. Still, she has softened, her eyes lingering on that face. _I know, comrade, I can't blame you_. John is making some kind of joke, a quick self-deprecating smile. He can see them gearing up for a reconciliatory round, John glancing around for bar staff. Without giving it a terrible amount of thought, Sherlock finds himself picking through the dense cluster of stools, armchairs, support beams that stand between them. It gives John ample time to spot him, and Sherlock sees a number of expressions flicker over his face, spinning reels in a fruit machine that finally settle on a kind of guarded smile.

"You found me." Up close, he can see that John is more intoxicated than he had thought. He's not warm, not exactly pleased to see him; hesitant to air dirty laundry in front of the brunette. 

Now that he's here, he's not sure what to say to him. John is filling the silence with meaningless introductions, but Sherlock can barely look at her, or him, and instead finds himself sort of glowering in the way he would as an adolescent, when social cues had escaped him. John takes pity on him, as always, sliding off his stool. They give off a stream of vaguely guilty-sounding banalities as they say their goodbyes, almost aggressively chummy, platonic. 

"Really, best of luck with the test," he says. 

"Oh, if not, there's always next year," she says.

 _Don't even look at him,_ Sherlock says, internally. She's prettier up close, a polished, bright-eyed reminder of the awful reality: that while John is absolutely singular, the opposite isn't true. There exists an entire world of potential someones with whom John would be happier, well-treated, satisfied. And that if even love-addled Sherlock can see it, John must as well.

He must seem angry to John, who is throwing him quick, frowning glances as they leave the pub, starting to speak once and then trailing off. Between the jealousy and their fight, Sherlock feels something closer to hopelessness, all the rush of the day's victories an afterthought. They night is cool, and the street back to their hotel is narrow, cobblestoned, empty. Sherlock wonders if John is feeling the same odd combination of guilt and grevience that he is.

"How's the case," John asks him, finally, when they're shoulder to shoulder in the tiny hotel lift that shudders and spasms with the effort of conveying them. Sherlock looks at him, nods once, worried about walking into a trap. 

"Was a former student, plagiarism... plagiarism issues."

"It's solved?" Does he detect something wavering in his tone? Irritation? Hurt?

"Well, yes, it was... not exactly a productive use of our time, if I'm to be honest, John, anyone functioning at full capacity would see in her office a glaring lack of--" Sherlock pauses, surreptitiously gauging John's reaction to the _our_ as they leave the lift. It's not heartening. "Well, we have a car back first thing in the morning."

"Alright," John says cooly. They pause in the hall, at the door to their identical rooms, silent for a long moment. 

"John-- I'm sorry."

For an awful moment John looks away, expressionless, but then crosses to Sherlock's side of the hall, takes the key card from his hand, and lets himself in. He does a strange kind of lap of the room, turning on lamps but not the main light, looking as though he's unsure of what to do with himself. 

"John," Sherlock says again, feeling woefully unequipped to use his words. It's all much easier with a blank page, a keyboard in front of him. 

"I want you to learn by heart any police procedure that might impact a case, alright?" John says suddenly. "Chain of evidence, forensic-- I don't bloody know. Whatever it is. Learn it. We'll both learn it, get Lestrade to talk us through it, and then we can't cock anything up."

Sherlock takes so long to reply that John's expression begins to darken again. "Yes, yes, of course," he says quickly, relief making the words rush out. A problem that can be solved by lengthy, compulsive research is barely a problem at all. "I will, John." He pauses. "'We'?"

"Well, obviously," John mumbles, barely audible, as he drops to sit on the bed. Sherlock hesitates, then goes to sit beside him, John lolling immediately against him, head on his shoulder.

"Did you have a lot to drink?"

"It's very dull without you," John says softly.

Sherlock knows he shouldn't say it, better to let it pass without comment, but his mouth works on its own. "Appeared you were entertaining yourself."

John straightens up, shaking his head in a way that seems less of a negation, more of an attempt to clear it. "Melanie?"

" _Melanie_?" Sherlock repeats, the implied familiarity somehow more irritating than anything than he had seen.

"Sherlock, it wasn't-- were you watching me?"

"If it wasn't anything, why would you care if I was?"

John makes a small sound, something halfway between amusement and irritation. "That's probably a conversation for another day." He looks up at him. "Are you cross?"

"I'm being very unfair and blaming her."

"Oh," John smiles. "She didn't know. We were just killing time. I promise."

"She wasn't."

The smile fades. "You are angry."

"That after an argument, you went immediately to buy drinks for a beautiful woman who wanted to sleep with you? Impossible." There's no heat to his words, if he's honest, no real anger behind them, but John nods slightly, as though thinking it over carefully. 

"If you did it, I would go absolutely mental, Sherlock, none left standing, so..." He shrugs slightly. "I wasn't interested at all in that way, you know that, don't you?"

When Sherlock doesn't reply John sighs, sliding forward to kiss his cheek, his jaw, then, suddenly, his chest, over his heart, resting his cheek there. 

"Drunk," Sherlock murmurs, wondering if John can feel through his clothes the way his heart races. 

"I'm sorry."

"I think I understand." The desire to be flirted with, to be of interest? After months of rejection by the person he loves, the desire to test the waters with one toe, to be reminded that he's not always so easily dismissed? Yes, he understands. 

"Well, don't overthink it," John mumbles into Sherlock's shirt. He protests wordlessly as Sherlock shifts away, dropping to a knee at the foot of the bed to unlace his shoes for him.

"Alright, I'm not that far gone," John says quietly as Sherlock eases off one shoe, then the other, running his hands along his legs as he looks up at him.

"You're not my sidekick. You're not my assistant." John is quiet, but nods once, staring fixedly down at him. "I ask many things of you. You help me... with more than you know, I think. And more than I realise, too. But you're not my helper. I know it, John."

John swallows, sinking a hand into Sherlock's hair, his eyes heavy on his. Sherlock presses a kiss to the side of John's knee, his thigh, and then it's not close enough. He rises to gather John up and back onto the bed, John's arms around him immediately, his body alcohol-warm, pliant. It seems to come from almost nowhere, the kiss, more like a gravitational pull than a deliberate action, John hot and enveloping and insistent.

"You make me so angry, you hopeless--" John mumbles roughly, but seems to forget his line of thought, rising into the kiss again. "Hopeless...selfish..." John punctuates his words with kisses along Sherlock's jaw, his neck. "Rude..."

"Yes," Sherlock says softly, eyes half-closed, tipping his head into John's lips. "John..."

"Thoughtless," he says against his cheek, holding his head, now, his voice soft.

"Jealous," Sherlock adds, brushing a kiss to John's brow, his closed eyelids. John sighs, his breath warm against his skin, the faint smell of whiskey. "Demanding..."

"I love you." It's rare, the words from him. Rare enough for Sherlock to have the handful of them at call, to mentally flip through the way a child would a set of trading cards. The first time, on the floor of the living room, Sherlock feeling stripped raw. In the morning, once, mumbled into his chest. Shouted across an abandoned warehouse, testing how far a voice would carry for a case. Texted, emailed, written in the margin of a book he had given him-- is it easier for him that way? Whereas it spills out of Sherlock constantly, compulsively; _I love you, forgive me, I was distracted, I was writing, I was thinking, but not of you just then, I'm sorry, I love you._ For isn't Sherlock the one who needs to confirm it, over and over, in the absence of the evidence of it that John, meanwhile, can effortlessly supply to him.

Sherlock manages a kind of nod in response, and as John tugs him into a kiss he slides his hands blindly under John's sweater, fingers spread at his sides, feeling every expansion of breath, every roll of his body against his own. When he runs a thumb over a nipple John murmurs against him, his fingers loosening slightly in his hair. "Do you like it?" Sherlock mumbles, repeating the action more insistently, watching John's face as he drops his head back. Sherlock draws up enough to see him, his sweater hiked up, flushed, eyes lidded but fixed intently on him. 

"Cruel," John says quietly, but it comes sounding like an endearment, breath hitching as Sherlock lowers his head to set his mouth there. "Don't," he breathes, almost a sigh, but still he arches slightly, hands at Sherlock's hair as if to hold him in place. Sherlock drags his tongue over his nipple, circles it, takes it gently between his teeth, John's breathing going heavy as he moves to mirror the action. When he raises up John is staring at him, lips parted, need undeniable on his face. It feels almost unbearable to not answer it, suddenly, to make him want for anything for one more moment, and without thinking he straightens to kiss his throat, unbuttoning his trousers with clumsy fingers. 

"Oh, god, Sherlock, no, it's okay--" John says quickly, his voice unsteady, propping himself up. "You don't have to, Sherlock, I--" 

Sherlock touches John's shoulder, guiding him back and leaning over him, slowly unzipping his fly as he catches his lips. John almost vibrates against him, his hands light at his shoulders, as if scared to influence Sherlock's behavior in any way, and when Sherlock pulls back he looks almost pained. 

"I want to, very much, right now," Sherlock says, his voice coming rough. It's foreign, startling, how much he does, fear displaced in a rush of desire to care for him, to please him, in some small way. "May I?"

John nods quickly, almost dazedly, and as Sherlock presses the flat of his palm against him through his pants he makes a soft sound. Sherlock runs his fingers along the length of him, heat radiating through the thin cotton, then shifts to kiss a path down his throat, his chest, the soft plane of his stomach, drawing John's pants slowly down as he moves. He's hard, and lovely in a way far different from the glimpses in the shower, or changing. The absurdity of it, that this is the first time seeing him, really, makes Sherlock almost heartsick, the thought of how much he still has to learn of him. 

"Tell me what you want," Sherlock says quietly, watching John's face slacken as he wraps his hand around him.

"That," John says in one shallow breath, tugging at Sherlock's shoulder to draw back up along his body. Sherlock settles on his forearm as he runs his fingers along the length of him, slowly, as though taking measure of the way he fits in his hand. As he lingers with the pad of his thumb at his frenulum, sliding against him gently, insistently, John presses his face to Sherlock's collar, stifling a moan he feels more than hears.

Sherlock turns his head to speak close to John's ear. "Don't be quiet. Teach me what you like."

"Yes," John breathes, fisting both hands in Sherlock's shirt, pressing a kiss to his neck. "Sherlock..."

Sherlock brushes a kiss to the corner of John's mouth, then draws back, watching for his reaction to each adjustment of his stroke. He often imagines himself almost virginal, inexperienced, and yet by some kind of muscle memory he finds himself coaxing John with a practiced hand, determined to draw out in him every ounce of pleasure he can. John's breath hitches as his grip grows firmer, steadier, finding its rhythm. "Like this, John?" 

"Yes," John says again, his voice changing to something unlike what Sherlock has heard from him before. Suddenly to see his face is overwhelming; there's too much that's new, too much passing he can't hold onto. He bows his head instead, murmuring a low sound of encouragement against warm hair. John turns his head blindly to kiss him, and that, too, is new, and also wonderful, to be able to take his fill of a kiss without guilt, their self-imposed restraint. Sherlock runs a hand into John's hair, guiding his head back, losing himself for a long while in the sweep of his tongue, the small sounds that vibrate from the back of his throat. 

Without realising Sherlock has quickened his strokes, as if to follow his own racing heart, and with a moan John breaks away, his breath heavy, holding Sherlock close to him. His eyes slowly rise to meet Sherlock's, letting him watch every gentle grit of his teeth, every flutter of his eyelids. Sherlock dips his head again and again to kiss his flushed skin, lingering at the pulse in his throat, imagining he can feel an echo of it in the hot flesh in his hand. 

John rises to the crook of Sherlock's shoulder again, and from the soft sounds he makes against him, the set of his fingers clutching his back, Sherlock can sense that he is growing close. He resists the urge to pin him back like a butterfly to be studied, instead shifts his weight, caressing the back of John's head. Mumbled entreatmeant spills out from some unknown place, John responding weakly, beautifully.

When John comes he feels it many at places at once: a body-hot pool in his hand, damp breath that stutters and waves with a soft cry against his skin, a shudder and snap of his body along his. John rolls his hips into Shelock's still gently-working hand, almost trembling with what Sherlock hopes is pleasure. John's grip on him slackens but doesn't break, holding Sherlock to him as he sinks back, one thigh drawn to rest against his hip. Just as the urge to see his face swells, John draws back slowly to show it to him. He seems overrun. _Look what I've done to you_. 

For a time he's quiet, breath steadying, softening in Sherlock's hand. When Sherlock reaches for his handkerchief, John's mouth quirks, _of course you have that_ , and takes it from him, then his hand. He cleans it carefully enough to be somehow moving, fingers unsteady and gentle against his skin. It takes him a moment to look back at Sherlock. His eyes are dark, yet under his ebb of orgasm Sherlock can see him grow troubled as he sees his face.

"Was this alright?" he asks quietly, touching Sherlock's cheek with his palm, then his lips. He draws Sherlock close again, occupied now with brushing kisses to him, smoothing his hair with slow hands. 

"Did you like it?" It's suddenly difficult to talk. He wants to lower his head to his chest, sink there into him, be stroked like a frightened pet. 

"Are you alright?" John asks again, an edge to his voice, now, his hands slowing. He pulls back to meet his eyes, and Sherlock nods, too quickly. John's brow knits. "Sherlock, I'm so sorry, I didn't--"

"No," Sherlock interrupts, too firmly. He softens his tone. "No. Please."

"Anything--"

It's easier to do than to ask. He moves to his side, John following, and curls to him, head tucked under his chin. For a moment John doesn't touch him. He's confused, Sherlock can sense, but then he gathers Sherlock closer, murmuring an endearment low on his breath. He begins to stroke Sherlock's hair with the slow, sifting movement he's perfected, and Sherlock feels the tide that was rising in him start to fall again. He lets his eyes close, breathing him in through the thick wool of his sweater.

John wants to speak, he knows, and knows equally that he can't, shouldn't tell him that when John came to him he did with both joy and terror following at his heels. That as familiar as those beasts are now to him, telling them apart is not a simple thing. He feigns stillness until John sleeps, then slips out of his arms, out of the room, into the night.


	11. Chapter 11

The realisation that something is wrong grows in increments clearer to John as the morning draws on. Sherlock had fallen into sleep easily, deeply, arms around him, but by the morning had vanished. John changes, packs their two rooms, checks out. He sits in the lobby with their overnight bags and texts him the maximum number of times he can without feeling ridiculous, holding an increasing feeling of horror at bay with self-assurances-- _he's getting breakfast, he got called in, he's arranging the car_ \-- all of which turn out to be true, but in actuality do little to ease his mind. Sherlock when he arrives is like a stone wall John can't climb over. He responds enough to him to make him feel that asking _what's wrong_ would be odd, but not enough to assure himself that nothing is, in fact, wrong. Once they are in the car back to London, Sherlock barely glances from his phone, and John curses the fact that they're being driven rather than driving, meaning it's now impossible to ask him anything.

Upon arriving home Sherlock lingers barely long enough for the kettle to boil, sweeping out the door as John stands, mouth open, about to ask what tea he'd prefer. 

In his minds eye he sees it all, worries at it, plays it again and again the way Sherlock might, searching for clues. _I want to, right now. Please._ He did say that. And yet John should have said no, it's clear. Sherlock's impulsivity is something he barely seems to recognize in himself, but John sees it, and should have stopped it. Talked about it. Should have known that whatever tangled thing had set roots in him couldn't have withered so quickly. 

But then there was more, too, enough to have carried him over at the time, enough to raise his temperature now as he remembers it; the blind closeness to him, the flashes of Sherlock's endless eyes, his weight, his warm hand. _My love. Let me feel you, John._ It's no use; no matter what angle he holds it, for him it catches the light the same way, gloriously.

His recall, given, is not the most reliable. At what point he was lost he's not sure, only that he was, definitely, just gone. He knows when the fog lifted, though, the moment he drew back to see Sherlock, looking down at him as though something had broken. He replays that, too, as he leaves the flat in the late afternoon, his feet operating on their own as though they can churn the image underfoot. In his mind, over and over, there's Sherlock, curled against him, sleeping fully dressed on the hotel bed-- yes, that too, out of character, for him to want to be held rather than hold.

Without being quite conscious of his destination, he finds himself at the National Gallery, the day's crowds thinned to Friday night stragglers. It's a comfort, a long-standing one, to step in from the evening to nurse whatever heartbreak, disappointment, embarrassment needs attention in the presence of a sympathetic artwork. It's easy, in the midst of his research, to see a given piece as a means to an ends, to break it down to its pieces in search of an illustrative example, a useful reference, a spot in a timeline. And yet, foxhole atheist, he comes, his ability to be moved rekindled each time he needs a salve. 

For a long time he walks, room to room, old friends, newcomers, the air, the light, and him, in suspension. He stops in front of a Rubens, something in Delilah's expression striking him anew. He sees in her a kind of pleasure, a heavy-lidded sensuality, in the moment of Samson's betrayl, her hand on his bare back tender, possessive. It stops him where he stands, throat tight, until his phone in his pocket shudders.

_Where are you? SH_

_National Gallery. Where are you?_

_Will you wait for me there?_

John circles until the painting draws him back, finds a seat nearby and waits. He sets down the bookbag he brought, too optimistically, with him, and is briefly amused he had thought he could carve out headspace for working. 

Sherlock arrives sooner than expected; John assumes he must have come from Scotland Yard. John watches him cross the adjoining room, dark coat adrift around him, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on John in a way that, even now, is electric. John curls his fingers in his sleeves.

"You were nearby?" John asks, when Sherlock is close enough to hear his lowered voice. Even in the empty rooms he finds it hard to let his voice carry.

Sherlock sits beside him. For an excruciating moment he doesn't speak, just watches John long enough to set his thoughts scattering, pulse racing. It's worse when he doesn't know if there is a problem, if he's worried about the right things. Sherlock reaches out to touch the hem of John's sleeve, runs his fingers along it. 

"I like you in this colour," Sherlock's fingertips slip under the hem, carefully grazing the thin skin at his wrist. The coat is nothing special. Charity shop. Burgundy. Sherlock raises his eyes to meet John's. "Regal."

"Fifteen quid," John tries to joke. It doesn't work. He's aware of how his expression must look, too open, pathetic, but he aches for solid ground to put his weight on. Anger, disappointment-- he can deal with it, if he only knew. 

"You must be very angry with me."

To be angry hasn't occurred to him. He tries it on for size, it doesn't fit. To him, it was great, the greatest, reason-obviatingly so. No matter how he thinks of it, _just a fucking handjob_ , he can't dismiss it. Was it how he imagined it would happen? No. Was Sherlock just how he had hoped? Yes, until this, yes. Decisive, relentless, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Still he aches for more of him. If Sherlock wanted him now, museum security would have to drag him away.

"I don't expect anything," John says, taking a deep breath at the slow movement of Sherlock's fingers from his palm to his wrist. "Anything more. You don't need to worry."

Sherlock nods, but says nothing. John is too close to spilling out everything. _Did you only want to do it because we fought? Because I said I didn't want to work with you? Because of that girl? Because I pushed you? Do I push you?_

"I appreciate..." Sherlock cocks his head, as though the concept of _appreciating_ is foreign to him. "How patient you have been. With me."

"I'm not sure if that's true..."

"I do." 

"No... that I've been patient." Is patience scrambling for any scrap, any small boundary he can push, everything about him hungry. How is it to be with someone like that, to know if the reins are loosened even slightly John will come graspingly, wanting more, more-- patience isn't like that. John's eyes drift up to the painting again, linger there. 

"It's a long time. To go without. It's too much to ask from someone."

Something about the phrasing stops John cold. It's the kind of statement that precedes a worse one, a letting down easy, an _it's for your sake, better for you_. He hadn't considered the possibility, but here it is, and everything seems obvious now: Sherlock hurrying to meet him, as though his resolve might fail him. The strange compliment (has he ever said anything about his clothes except _I can buy you new ones_?), as if to soften the blow. His reserve.

John can't find words-- and what could he say, _please don't break up with me_? If Sherlock has set his mind to it, there's no going back. 

"I don't care," he manages, the words coming uneven. His chest feels tight enough to restrict his breathing. Suddenly he stands, paces to the far side of the room to calm down, forestall somehow. 

Even under Sherlock's light footsteps the wooden floor announces his approach behind him. As Sherlock touches the small of his back John lowers his head, turns back to him, surprised by how close Sherlock holds his body to his. John can't bear to meet his eyes, just shifts to the balls of his feet, as though to lean against him. It's too fast, he hasn't had time to prepare himself, submerged suddenly in a kind of contained panic. 

"John."

John turns away, but half-heartedly.

"You are upset."

"Of course I'm fucking upset," John snaps, loud enough for a startled visitor look over at from an entrance to the room, turning immediately on her heel. "Are you not? Is this easy for you?" he asks in a hiss. 

"I-- no," Sherlock says, slowly, deliberately. "It's... John, it's not..."

"What else can I do? I try, I do, honestly, Sherlock, to do right by you, but you just--"

"I know you do--"

"But that means nothing, when you decide I'm not doing it _well_ enough? Is that it?"

Sherlock frowns, one hand lingering at John's elbow. "John?"

"I can't be without you," John says, lowering his voice. "I need you."

"I need you, too..." Sherlock starts, not getting far before John interrupts him. 

"Say what you have to say, then. Go on." 

Sherlock seems to waver, his expression suddenly searching. "John. I'm not sure what's happening here."

John tamps down on his relief before it can overwhelm him. His fingers uncurl from the fists he hadn't noticed he was making, jammed in his coat pockets. "You don't..."

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Fuck." It comes out in a laugh. "You're not breaking up with me right now." Never hurts to be thorough: "Are you?"

Sherlock shakes his head, frowning slowly. John laughs again, punches Sherlock's arm a little more roughly than he meant to. "Bloody hell." He turns to collect his bag, then rethinks, turning back halfway. "Not asking for a break? _Space_?"

"Maybe I should," Sherlock says, not unkindly. "Crazy person."

"Well, that's your fault," John mutters, hauling his bag over his shoulder. By some unspoken agreement, and spurred by an attendant who has rotated in from the adjoining room to watch them with slight consternation, they leave to find a taxi home. John lingers close to Sherlock the whole way, accepts his silent offers to carry his bag, open the taxi door, the door home. Relief and embarrassment leaves him slightly exhausted, so that it's not until later in the evening that John remembers Sherlock had, in fact, wanted to speak to him. 

He comes out from his bath to find Sherlock in his bedroom reading in insufficient light, sprawled on his bed with one knee drawn up. His window is open-- it's not warm enough to justify it, John worries about the heating bills, but Sherlock seems so fond of circulating air he's been know to crack a window in a snowstorm. John leans against the door frame until Sherlock shatters any hope he has of lingering undetected.

"Come here if you're going to be a pest," he says, not looking up from his book.

"What did you want to talk to me about, in the gallery?"

"Before your episode?" Sherlock asks, amusement honeying in his voice. His turns his page; John has no doubt at this point that he can read and converse perfectly well at the same time. It has the same effect on him as when he sees someone sleeping with their eyes open.

"Stop it. I've been going mad all day."

Sherlock finally directs his attention at him, setting his book in his lap, holding out an arm with the air of someone who won't take no for an answer. John crosses the room, letting Sherlock draw him down against his side. 

"I know," Sherlock says quietly.

"Impossible, you've barely spoken to me."

"I knew I was upsetting you. That's what I meant."

"Doesn't take a bloody genius," John says, crossly. He picks up Sherlock's book, skims the page without absorbing much, _big stars were snapping outside, beyond the ridge-tops of the pine trees_. "Why be like that, if you knew I was twisting myself in knots about it?" He looks up at him. "I mean, after..."

"I was thinking."

John closes his eyes in irritation. Sherlock seems to predict his thoughts of moving away by tightening his arm. "I know it doesn't make it better for you. I just--"

"What was it you came to tell me before?" John interrupts. "Skip to the findings... also," John cuts off Sherlock again as he takes a breath to speak. "If it's that it's never something you want to do again, I already know. I already said I know. And I already feel as awful as I can. So don't insult me."

Sherlock falls quiet, for long enough for John to glance up at him, frowning. It's hard for him too, he knows. John shifts onto his side to curl closer, sliding an arm around his waist, and settles on his shoulder. 

"John, I don't want you to feel awful."

"Do you... feel awful that I feel awful?" John says, smiling as he feels Sherlock's chest rise with a silent laugh. "Let's forget about it? It was-- it happened, and we can just move on..."

"Let me actually talk a moment," Sherlock says quietly, running his hand along John's arm. "I don't want you to feel bad because you shouldn't feel bad. I wanted to, I asked you to, and-- I also wanted to be good to you. I didn't follow through on that, but the point was that to make you feel guilty for what happened wasn't what I intended, but I'm... self absorbed--"

"No," John whispers, mock-horror.

"John, I panicked a little. You must think that's very stupid--"

"I don't."

"But the more I thought, the more I started to think that I hadn't tried to work through this problem--" Sherlock pauses. "I do think more and more that it is a problem. Because to avoid something, something I'm not sure I want to avoid, out of fear is..." He looks down at John, looking strangely unsure. "I'm not explaining myself well."

"I think..." John shrugs, running his fingers along the untied sash of Sherlock's bathrobe. "I think that's a good description for the thousand years between when I realised I loved you and when you got me to tell you. So..."

"You should have seen my thousand years," Sherlock murmurs, pressing a kiss to John's temple. John closes his eyes, breathes him in-- wool, soap, the faint smell of tobacco. Less than a year ago this in itself consisted a sizable bulk of his longing. "What I wanted to say, before, was that what happened was my fault for not thinking it through enough. I couldn't get a hold on myself afterwards. But I also... was thinking, when I was reacting very badly, my most pressing concern was that I was going to run myself into the ground and never try again, and just let that be it. Which is-- John, not ideal, because I liked it. Maybe you don't believe me..."

"You seemed to," John says slowly, teasing the way he would to someone else, someone not Sherlock. He immediately wishes he didn't, not sure if it's alright to say, or even accurate. What's unsettling is not knowing how much of Sherlock's behaviour was his imagination, how much an act of Sherlock's eerie mimicry, and how much reality. 

Sherlock shifts his weight to the side slightly, as though to see John better. "What I mean to say is that I don't want it to be the last time. I'd like to try."

John gives a small nod, the best he can muster when Sherlock is holding his gaze intently, as though scanning for a reaction. John drags his eyes away, wrapping his bathrobe sash slowly around his palm. "I feel as though in the past, when you've been with people in the past, maybe it had been more about what they want, for whatever reason--" John pauses and glances up. Sherlock's expression hasn't changed. "Am I wrong?"

"No. You're not wrong."

"So... I think if we do, if you want to try more, we should try and find what you like first. If anything, you know? It's possible it's just not for you," John says softly. He feels a kind of tenderness towards him swelling up, he wants to be gentle, but it seems to have the opposite effect to what he intends. Sherlock doesn't look calmed. 

"I suppose I thought you'd be happier."

"Are you saying you want this to please me?"

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "Yes."

"Just to please me?" John presses, propping himself up on one arm. "Because it doesn't, you know. Treating me like I can't handle it. It makes me feel like a shithead."

Sherlock moves fast enough to shock John's breath out of him, taking him by his hips and moving him onto his back, shifting to kneel over him. His expression is harder, darker, intense on John in a way he's only glimpsed, never directed at him. Sherlock without his learned filter, learned patience. John's heart pounds, partly with anxiety, partly with interest. 

"Do you think you're going to scare me?" Sherlock asks, his voice low. "I know you. I know you so well it should bother you." 

John can only stare up at him, brows knitting. He touches one of Sherlock's forearms gently, nods.

"I'm not going to wither away if you tell me what I already know. I know what you want from me, how you see me." Sherlock shakes his head. "There's nothing wrong with it. You love me. You're supposed to. Don't pretend it has no teeth for you."

"What do you want, me to follow you around begging? Do you want me to have no pride at all?"

"Yes," Sherlock says sharply. "No pride, no pretense, nothing. I want you as you are."

"Bullshit."

"Try me," Sherlock whispers, running a hand into John's hair. John looks away, and then he realises. They've both been treating each other with kid gloves, moderating their hunger for the other's sake-- John's desire, Sherlock's need for candor. Trying to be what they think the other needs. For Sherlock, surely, intimacy would be to have no gap between what he knows and what is freely shown to him. And yet, John has been occupied with doing the opposite, with obscuring, diffusing, for so long he barely stopped to consider if it was right. 

Sherlock presses his lips to John's pulse in his neck, hand tightening in his hair, and John shudders. 

"I understand," he murmurs, is rewarded with the set of Sherlock's teeth again his skin. 

Sherlock draws back enough to see John's face. 

"Transparency," John offers. 

Sherlock nods. He brushes his lips to John's eyelids, his forehead, his mouth. "Yes."

"Then you too."

"Yes..." Sherlock almost growls the word. "Everything, John, that's what I want."

"That's all?" John laughs, but the words are barely out of his mouth before he pulls Sherlock to him, rising into a fierce kiss that Sherlock returns, hands fisted in his hair. The open window sends waves of cold night air into the room, catching in his still damp hair. It's all the more to evidence the heat of Sherlock's body against him. John shivers at either, both.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had something else on the boil for this chapter but I'm drowning in a sea of feelings from The Sign of Three and this just happened, the planned one will be up soon too. Sorry to disappoint anyone in this for the ACTION PACKED PLOT  
> I also just wanted to say thank you to people who have subscribed/left kudos and especially comments, I'm kind of surprised that anyone has even found their way here and it's super nice of you, especially as this drags out way longer than I ever planned, so thanks!

Sherlock wonders if thirty-six hours is too short a time to grow despondent missing someone. The only person he could feasibly ask is John, and he's not entirely certain he wants him in the loop. He picks up his phone countless times, but then thinks of poor John, who has managed to message him, but remains largely helpless in the face of the conference itinerary, his jigsaw of scheduled activities. John had been quietly happy for the trip, even after the nights working on his paper for presentation, and some part of Sherlock thinks it must be a relief for him to be immersed in his own work, Sherlock and his demands far away.

He occupies himself with busywork, writing a book review commissioned by a monthly magazine, his unmanageable emails. He's done is best to ignore the sudden crush of attention since his longlisting, but at some point he needs to make a decision. Can he bear do interviews? He could it by email, his anonymity in tact. According to-- well, according to almost everyone with a financial interest, the pen-name itself is an extravagance he should have cast off immediately upon his nomination. The idea is close to unbearable, and the stupidity of their reasoning is enough to make him question again his choice of representation. When is his anonymity more precious, more vital than now, when attention is being paid to him? What sense does it make to jealously guard ones privacy while loitering in semi-obscurity, only to shuck it off as soon any interest in his real identity arises? 

Their answer, of course, is both self evident and hateful-- an air of mystery sells books to those so inclined, the forum-dwellers, the novelty-seekers. Now the mainstream is interested, apparently one must change tack and submit faithfully to the great churning gears of publicity. That his pen-name has any use or meaning to him aside from marketing seems to occur to no one-- after all, there's no objectionable content, they argue, nothing incriminating. It's difficult to explain to these office workers the subtleties involved in walking onto a crime scene as an author rather than a consulting detective. The implications for his walk-in cases, too, are disheartening ( _shall we ask a published novelist about our missing father?_ ) Worse still is the prospect of a stream of deranged fans discovering they can lumber in under false pretenses. 

And more still, the real crux of the matter for his publishers, he knows, is that a further advantage of his anonymity is the blanket refusal it implies for the sorts of things that would typically be expected of him: book tours, guest talks, profiles, photographs. Does it implicate his profitability? Yes. But will he come into a large trust fund once a requisite number of clean drug tests are submitted to his weasel brother? Also yes. And in the meantime, he has freelance work, an undiscriminating eye for cases, occasional handouts, and a flatmate. 

His dear flatmate. Perhaps it isn't the hours and instead the distance. Perhaps it is that it's now evening, and the knowledge that John could call at any time, and yet doesn't. Sherlock keenly wishes he had thought to look over a copy of his itinerary before he left, as to properly regulate his expectations. He could find it, had deduced most of John's passwords purely by reflex from keyboard patterns, traces on a touch screen. Still, his resolve had never failed him, even months ago when John's cretinous ex-boyfriend was lighting up his phone with messages that would leave him white as a sheet. But John would cast it aside, those early weeks, and the knowledge that his attention was fully on Sherlock made him want to be better, made him not want to do things that would have been as easy as breathing to do to someone else. In hindsight, if John knew what Sherlock had done to the majority of the boyfriend's online accounts, as well as his air travel security status, he may still consider a line to have been crossed. On the other hand, it was done with the best intentions. The messages had stopped, after all.

It's not late until his phone rings, just as hope is beginning to ebb. He answers the phone on its first ring, so that the first sound he hears is John's laughter. "Sherlock," he says fondly, almost chastising. "Waiting by the phone?"

"Spooky coincidence," Sherlock says crisply, faintly embarrassed.

"Mm," John's voice sounds slightly alcohol-warmed. "Did you eat?"

"Yes," Sherlock lies. "Is Vienna treating you well?"

"Well, I've been indoors a lot. Tonight there was a workshop, introduction to some chemistry-- to help understand terms used in dating methods and conservation processes and things like that. You'd hate it, they had to speak very slowly. A lot of blank stares." He pauses. "Can you eat something now so I can make sure you have?"

"Mrs. Hudson has already been up here, John." The misplaced indignance in his voice makes John laugh again in one soft burst. 

"Alright. I'm sorry. It's funny, we haven't been apart--"

"Since I went away on that case."

"That's right. And we weren't..." Not this, not yet. Still, he had missed him then, too. More, possibly, burdened with the knowledge he could never tell him.

John falls quiet, Sherlock, ears pricked, can hear the rustle of linens under him. From the timbre of his voice, and the faint instinctual pull the familiarity of it has on him, he suspects he's now lying down. The image of John curled on his side, speaking close to his ear makes him close his eyes briefly, and without thinking he drifts to John's dark room, switching on a lamp by his bed as he sits.

"Is it wrong to miss you already?" Sherlock finds himself asking. 

"I don't know, but I like it," John says softly. Sherlock can hear the smile in his voice. "You alright?"

"Yes, now." 

John hums, coming distorted down the phone as a kind of a purr.

Sherlock drops onto John's bed, staring at the constellation of sticky notes, photocopies, pictures, that spread wildly across the wall above John's desk. "But I don't have to keep you."

"That's shockingly considerate, but I'm not going back to the bar. Lot of sexual tension down there."

"All you art historians, taking off your tortoise-shell glasses--"

"Unpinning our matronly buns, suddenly it's a room full of supermodels."

Sherlock smiles. "Should I be jealous?"

"I'm in my pants talking to you, I think you're safe." He's quiet for a moment. "What were you doing before I called?"

"I was working." Well, that was the intention. "I've been thinking about you. About the other night."

The other night. Sherlock snapping, demanding transparency, John staring up at him like it was a foreign concept. They'd-- what would he call it? Kissed, touched, did what they always do, but moreso, as though they had lost sight of the barriers they had erected together. It was as though they could, and were about to, do anything. He thinks of John, wonderful for it, briefly giving himself over. 

"Is it just me, or is it easier to talk about it over the phone?" John laughs. "I'm sorry about stopping."

"No-- it was right. It was right of you. You..." Sherlock trails off, watching Harry's kitten as it leaps onto the bed, then the stack of books on the bedside table, standing at attention to stare at Sherlock. "You know me well."

"I feel like a teenager. Not as in hormonal, just sentimental. I want it to be right for you. And for me too... we've waited this long. There's no rush."

Sherlock falls quiet as he thinks about it. It's not the first time John has stopped things, called to slow down, but the difference is that increasingly for Sherlock's sake rather than an attempt to set his own limits. What was Sherlock planning to do? Almost anything, in that moment-- he feels increasingly impatient, as though he can break through his own hesitation by brute force. It's a foolish impulse. He overestimates himself; he had hurt John the last time he tried, in the hotel. 

"Part of me wants to leave it up to you."

"Oh, I don't think you do..." John says, his voice warm with gentle innuendo. "If you want to try then we should, but slowly. You want honestly, I do too, but I want you to be honest with yourself as well. About what you want, and not what you want to want."

Sherlock doesn't reply for a moment, struck with the strange grace of the sentiment. _You're not required to want me._ Perhaps this is the core of it, the fear that he'll try and find himself not capable. Perhaps by trying he'll break the fragile membrane of what they've managed to maintain up until now.

"And if it's nothing?" he asks. 

"We don't do nothing," John says softly. "It's plenty."

"John..."

"I love what we do." His beautiful voice. Sherlock feels a fresh wave of affection break over him. He directs it at the cat, reaching up to pat its head clumsily. It appears unmoved by the gesture, but he likes to think John would appreciate his effort, if he saw it.

"I do, too," Sherlock says quietly. He drops back against the pillows. "So much, John."

"Let's not be too nice to each other. I have another three days still." 

"I'd like to be nice to you."

"You'd like me to miss you," John jokes. He's not wrong. 

"Is it necessary for me to encourage that?"

"If you knew how often I think of you..." Sherlock can hear John resettle, a faint sigh. "Sherlock..."

"I think of you, too."

"Okay, be nice to me. What do you think of?"

Sherlock laughs. "Who says it's nice things, John?" 

"Mine are all nice..." John sounds increasingly faraway. Two drinks, if Sherlock had to guess. Three. "Where are you?"

"In bed."

"Mine or yours?"

Sherlock hesitates. "Well, on bed, I suppose--"

"Mine." John sounds pleased. "Sleep there."

"Is there any distinction, really? When's the last time you slept in here?" He's not quite sure why he's protesting, embarrassment perhaps, of being found out to be missing him more than is reciprocated. 

"I like the image."

"You'd like me pining?"

"Sherlock..." The tone of his voice has changed, something faintly unguarded in it, quiet in his ear, is enough to soothe the faint unease he had been feeling without him. He closes his eyes, but it's not enough, to hear his breath without feeling it also. "Tell me what you're wearing." 

Sherlock smiles the faint tone of irony in his voice. "Just... pajama pants. A sweater... well, the one you bought me--"

"Oh, Sherlock," John murmurs, gently, fondly. "You've got it so bad for me..."

"Coincidence," Sherlock protests, half-heartedly.

"Ah, another coincidence..." John's voice grows faintly muffled. Sherlock imagines him on his side, phone tucked between his cheek and the pillow. Sherlock swallows. The thought of John in bed alone, warmed from whiskey, stirs him. "Do you remember the last time you wore that?"

"I'm not sure..."

"That party we had to go to. By the river." 

Oh. The river. It had been a long night of his favourite kind of investigation, all the puzzle pieces assembled there for the taking, as though the lavish garden party had been thrown for their express use. They had been there early to set up a dummy safe, and then that night mingled ruthlessly for their potential thief. It was Sherlock who had noticed the breathtakingly-expensive hairpin one of the catering staff was wearing, but John who had snared her, able to feign harmless affability for long enough to coax the information on her colleagues they needed.

John is starting to understand his own potential, Sherlock is sure, his strengths. What he lacks in observation he makes up for in goal-orientation. Sherlock can find the trail, duplicitous John can ease their way in in ways Sherlock can't always manage. His own ability to be personable isn't something he can summon in himself at will, not all the time, not like John can.

"Taking that bottle of prosecco on your way out was one of your finer moments." 

"I have my uses," John says slowly, Sherlock can hear the smile in his voice. "You were extremely pleased with me, if I remember correctly…"

"You were clever that night." Sherlock pauses. "You were incredibly lovely."

"I've never been kissed like that, the way you did…" John wavers, as though testing the waters, but Sherlock can't bring himself to interrupt. He remembers well, very well, considering how quickly they had polished off the wine, drifting down to the river, their work done. It feels now like it had stretched into days, as though John's body has its own relationship with time, with space, and in his proximity everything distorts. Even he knows it was chaste, teenaged, possibly, but somehow it was more meaningful for it, their desires for once aligned. John had lain in the cool grass, and taken Sherlock with him, everything about them somehow both languid and intensely focussed. The memory of John in his arms, the sweetness in how they had kissed, unhurried, sets something twisting in his stomach.

"I think you like that, Sherlock."

"Of course--"

"I think you like when I'm gentle to you," John goes on. "Do you want to know what I've been thinking about, when I'm here, missing you?"

Sherlock murmurs assent, not wanting to break the flow of John's voice, somehow growing steadily hypnotic. 

"I think about touching you, your head in my lap... you like that, too, don't you? When I touch you, when I stroke your hair... am I good at it now, do I do it the way you like?"

"Yes..."

"I tried to learn... because when I do it right you go so soft, and still, like I'll stop if you disturb me... but I wouldn't, the way you react is so gorgeous to me, Sherlock, it makes me crazy. I think about what else you might like, how else I could make you look like that..."

"You may be doing it now," Sherlock finds himself saying, barely aware of his own speech. John's voice laps at him like waves at the side of a boat-- yes, without realising he's been set adrift.

"I thought so." John is soft, but sure. "The thing is, I want to please you, whatever it is I want to do for you... Sherlock, I want to be all about you..."

"And what about you?"

"Ah..." John murmurs low into his ear. "But you know what I like, don't you?"

"I think I do. Tell me."

"You do know. I like... your weight on me, your hands on me. I like your body, Sherlock, even when I feel you through our clothes, I love it. Your skin. I like when you hold onto my hair, so you can move me how you like, kiss me the way you like... I haven't cut it, you know, so you can hold me like that. Because I couldn't say, please, make me yours... but still you do that for me, don't you?" 

"I don't only do it for you," he says, not entirely steadily. "You don't see you how you are, John. I'm cruel, I know, but..."

John gives a soft sigh of approval, one Sherlock knows well, the same as he does when he's being kissed. 

"I want to be there my in bed with you, so much..." he says quietly. His voice softens, loses its edges. John sounds increasingly close to sleep. "Sherlock, please sleep there."

"I will."

"I thought of you so many times in that bed. So many times, of you coming to me there." 

"Come home to me soon."

"I will..." Sherlock hears the undeniable sound of a muffled yawn. "I miss you. You don't have to encourage me, I do."

Sherlock smiles. He imagines John curled up, his grip loosening on his phone, eyes half-closed. "Go to sleep, John."

"Tell me you miss me, too."

Sherlock laughs, closing his eyes. "I'm in your bed, wearing the present you bought me, remember?"

"Tell me..." Sherlock can barely hear the words, more breath than speech.

"I miss you," he says quietly, but receives no response, only his soft breathing, a distant siren. For a shamefully long time he keeps the connection, something about it lulling him as well, cheek pressed to a pillow that smells like John.


	13. Chapter 13

Early morning, Sherlock receives phone call from his publisher, informing him someone will be stopping by the flat-- something that, nursing his headache, he promptly forgets. The night before he had bought and then finished alone a welcome-home bottle of wine, and so passes the morning in a kind of stupor. 

When a small woman, barely out of her teens, appears at the doorway, he thinks initially she may be a client. Her wavy, blonde hair is cut in a bob that brings to mind unfortunate associations with a toddler's first, no-maintenance hairstyle. She holds a leather compendium to her chest with one folded arm.

"Mr Smith," she says, offering her free hand as he lumbers over, her gesture unpracticed. "My name is Claire, from Brown and--"

"Yes," Sherlock says, clearing his throat as it comes out more as a grunt. He returns the handshake perfunctorily. "I was informed. Come in."

Claire wavers a moment before entering, doing her best to adjust her posture, tucking her chin in a way that suddenly strikes Sherlock as vaguely charming. She is a horse-rider, newly vegan, and long sighted. She has inherited her father's widow's peak, and presumably will eventually inherit his publishing house in addition.

"Can I offer you a cup of tea?" 

"Thank you," Claire says, a note of surprise in her voice. She's been warned, he supposes. Regardless, the tea is one of John's habits, something he repeats with enough regularity to have imprinted on Sherlock as well. Their intent differs, of course-- with John, tea must be offered, as is the order of the universe. For Sherlock, it's a trick for short-circuiting dull conversation, one that comes with the remarkable bonus of appearing sociable. There have been visits by clients where John has had to stop him from offering five or six times.

She is clearly interning for her father's company-- from the thick socks and her posture, her weight shifted to her toes, has walked over in new, inexpensive leather shoes, presumably bought for the occasion. He takes pity on her, pulls out a chair at the desk for her to sit as he heads to the kitchen. He makes tea for her, another strong coffee for himself, and as he carries them out he sees that she has set up her laptop and put on a pair of glasses.

"Alright," she says, murmuring a thank-you as he sets the mug down. Sherlock collects the empty one he had been drinking wine out of the night before, half-tempted to swallow the last few mouthfuls. "What I've been asked to do is collect a statement, and also any notes or drafts relate to the disputed material of the novel."

"Disputed," Sherlock repeats. 

Claire is quiet for a moment, head cocked. "I'm sorry, I don't know what word you'd prefer to use. Obviously Mr Brown's position is that the accusations are false, but we do need to address the media, and--"

She trails off at Sherlock's look of incomprehension. He takes a sip of coffee, then one of wine for good measure. "Am I supposed to know what you're talking about?"

"I just-- well, yes. I assumed that when someone is in the news they're aware of it." Sherlock can't help but admire the edge to her tone, sharp and as delicate as a scalpel. Even late-morning, it's probably still too early for her to manage him. Most mornings he can barely manage himself. Not to mention poor John, whose daily existence must be a wretched one. He thinks of him in Vienna, eating breakfast in his hotel-- or is he on his way back? He had called the evening before: cancelled flight, will be back today instead of that night, when in a fair and just universe he should have been. It was this wine-augmented disappointment that Sherlock is still recovering from.

Claire is typing, shaking her head. "Okay, in that case you should sit down and read over these," she says, turning the computer towards him. Sherlock does as he's told, setting a mug on each side of the laptop.

_Booker longlisted author shaken by plagiarism accusations._  
 _A. C. Smith: Postmodern Literary Bowerbird or Fraud?_  
 _Readers respond to A. C. Smith plagiarism allegations._

Sherlock laughs, looks up at Claire as though to confirm the insanity of it. She doesn't smile. The story seemed to have traveled like a lit fuse up the chain of internet reporting-- forum post, blog post, Twitter, news aggregator, newspaper-hosted book-section blog posts. Conspicuously absent are articles anywhere that would be subject to a fact-check of any rigour, but this appears to have hindered nothing in its dispersion.

"Apparently it cropped up on a fan forum, maybe you're not aware of that either--"

That damned forum. Someone had made it almost a joke, a homage of sorts, with careful attention paid to replicate the dark, difficult-to-read design Sherlock had described in an short story as the hangout of a dead poet's obsessive, eventually criminal, fan club. It wasn't even one of his good ones. The fact that it had attracted a small mass of those with time enough on their hands to loiter there seemed to be a secondary function, although one that sets his teeth on edge whenever it's brought up as a sign of his so-called cult following. Of course this ridiculousness came from there. "It's the reason I stopped searching my name."

Her eyes flick over to the window, a deconstructed eyeroll. "Of course, strangers with an interest in your work..."

Ah. Aspiring author; should have seen it from the pink paper of the notepad tucked in her compendium-- no girlish affectation, a more interesting one.

"Where is the blue notepad?"

"I'm sorry, but I really--" she starts, then trails off. Softens. "You like Dumas?"

"Not quite so much as you."

She almost smiles, tucking hair behind her ear in a remarkably efficient gesture, as though she does it thousands of times a day. "My father told me about the notebooks when I read _The Count of Monte Cristo_ as a girl, and it just turned into one of those awful things you do when you're a kid and easily impressed. It's very silly, it's habit now... I don't even write by hand that often."

Sherlock can't help but warm towards her. Wasn't he, too, once a teenager, charity-shopping for an Olivetti? "Well, I hope you fill many of them," he says, then returns to reading before he can anger her further.

He finds the original forum post easily-- bloated with replies, it has floated like a dead goldfish to the top of the first page of the forum. The title, _emperor = no clothes_ makes him groan internally; the post itself doesn't.

_ok i came on this forum to see if any of you bitches have a brain between you but your too busy creaming yourselves over the prize thing I guess. if any of you had read a book not written by AC you would know he is a fraud and all the shit you keep circlejerking over is just stolen from people who can actually write. since you're all subliterate here's a breakdown for you. i made it a list cause it is about your fucking level._

His first thought is that the author has found coincidental similarities in other works-- when he skims down the post there seems to be quantity enough to suggest cherry-picking at best. The more he reads, however, the stranger it feels. The combination between the slightly thuggish tone and the extent of his effort is somehow chilling.

_alright first off FRANCESCA and JULES are direct copies of characters from the book UNE VUE SUR LA MER pub. 1961 carol tetard. you probably can't even read french but heres some choice excerpts maybe there is hope for some of you_

With each point there is an accompanying scan from the referenced books, some crudely-annotated with shaky electronic handwriting, some not. 

The author has done a remarkable job. If Sherlock hadn't written the book himself, he would find it hard to maintain scepticism. In one example, there are parallels to the sibling relationship that forms the core of Sherlock's book. In another, an eerily similar chess game the sister and brother play during a blackout-- a chess game the details of which he had laboured over, diagrammed. Another short story contains a similar detail, a safe that opens to reveal a half-smoked pack of cigarettes; a particular point in Sherlock's novel that has been dissected repeatedly on that forum, he knows. Words to a song he had written to play on a car radio, now appearing woven into a self-published book of verse by a Scottish author. A book on codes and ciphers outlines a method of encoding messages using train schedules-- one he had been reasonably proud of coming up with himself. His description of the path of a flock of sparrows is buried in a memoir of a long-forgotten stage actress. 

Sherlock feels light-headed. He stands and goes to the window, lighting a cigarette as he pushes it open.

"Mr Smith?" Claire asks. He'd almost forgotten her presence.

"I'd just like a moment." 

The texts themselves are not well known; Sherlock is not familiar with a single one. Some appear pulpy, some merely obscure, out of print. The choices are so specific, so strange, that it would be impossible to claim any pilfering as homage-- which seems to be at least partially the point.

Of course it's ridiculous, a prank. The complicating factor is the amount and variety of drugs he was using when writing. It seems impossible that he could ever lose time to such a protracted and repeated extent, but no matter how obscure the books, they exist in the world. He does collect books the way some collect pocket lint, and disposes of them with a similar degree of ceremony. They were available to him, in theory. 

Another complicating factor: he had submitted the manuscript during a month-long stay at his brother's house, where he had been required by ever-pliable terms of his trust fund to stay after rehab. The manuscript saved on a thumb drive, he had left his notes and old computer when he walked out the minute the required period had ended-- during lunch, in fact, which at the time had been the most dramatic gesture available to him.

To talk to his brother is impossible. He hadn't, aside from one or two tersely worded text messages, and won't start now. Instead he can do the next best thing: find the author, and do it soon.

He has some things to go off. For one, the attempt to disguise the writing as uneducated internet speak seems to have fooled some readers, but in parts seems to go threadbare. The intelligence and planning behind the post, the sheer time taken, makes it seem unlikely this was merely the dashed-off screed of a frustrated everyman. What seems more likely is that the poster is a forum regular, disguising their speech patterns. Their motivation behind it, though, is unclear: a prank that unwittingly caught the wind and dispersed? A strange conceptual piece? Sheer malice-- sabotage?

There's no helping it, he sits back down and starts to read replies. The poster is working from a new account, only one post so far, but he hopes there may be some more to go off down-thread.

"So--" Claire starts, seemingly aware that she has been forgotten again. "Like I said, I've been asked to take copies of anything that shows the development of the contested material... notes, drafts, things like that..."

"I don't have notes here. Just tell Will I'll get back to him when I find who wrote this."

She laughs, a little rudely. "You're going to try and go _super sleuth_ on this?" she asks, eyebrow raised. 

Sherlock's eyes slide slowly up to meet hers over the screen.

"Yes." He's about done with company. He closes the computer and slides it over to her. "Thank you very much for your visit, Ms Brown."

She pauses at him knowing her last name, but to her credit merely narrows her eyes. "I'd prefer to not go back empty-handed."

He's unsure whether or not she suspects him. If she does, he can hardly blame her. He suddenly wishes very acutely for John's presence. "If you'd like to help me read through this... writing, then possibly we can come up with something for you to return with."

She considers this, frowning. "Read what?"

"I'd like to go through the forum and see if there's any indication of who is responsible for this. From the level of familiarity the person has with the book, and more specifically of details of the book that are of particular interest to this group of readers, I think they've possibly been active on the forum under another account."

Claire considers this. "If that's the case, other users probably are speculating on the same thing."

"They may have done some of the footwork." The thread itself has around seventy pages of replies, swollen by outside attention, and combined with previous threads that may be of use, Sherlock could use a second pair of eyes-- especially considering that his preferred pair of eyes is apparently otherwise occupied. 

Claire seems somehow taken by the possibility. She opens her computer silently, and Sherlock collects his own. Claire takes on the task of trawling the original thread, Sherlock occupies himself with searching for anything of interest in past discussions. He has to register an account to search, something he finds vaguely amusing and upsetting in equal parts. He's not entirely sure what he repels him about the small forum so much-- attention, possibly, the idea of something so dear to him being combed over. Being misinterpreted. But, like Claire says, is it ungratefulness on his part to object to that? Didn't he write in layers with the hope of them being peeled back? So what if in each peeling the work takes a new shape?

They work until it begins to feel fruitless, then continue with fresh cups of coffee. Sherlock grows quietly frustrated, every path leading neatly to another brick wall. Claire, meanwhile, seems inexhaustible, chiming endlessly up with her own speculations, points for Sherlock to investigate further. 

He's considering a drink or worse when he eventually hears familiar footfalls on the stairs in the hall, and feels a kind of Pavlovian joy building in him with the sound of each step. John comes in looking faintly bedraggled, weighed down with bags and excess clothing, but still smiles slowly, widely, as he sees Sherlock. 

"Hello," he says warmly, addressing them both, but some part of it breaks off for Sherlock alone, he feels. Although Sherlock feels compelled to go to kiss him, something about the presence of a stranger in the flat makes them fall back to old habits, avoiding overt affection in front of clients. Instead Sherlock greets him as normal, and lets his eyes linger as John shucks off bags by the door. 

John crosses the room to deposit more on the desk where they're working. He rests a hand briefly on Sherlock's shoulder as he looks down at the screen. "Oh, you saw."

"You knew?" Sherlock asks, somehow taken aback. Not even a phone call?

"I have a Google alert," John says, leaning close to read. His fingertips brush low along Sherlock's back. Sherlock inclines slightly against him, feeling a faint animal relief at his presence, even through the lingering sting of his, in hindsight, very conspicuous silence. 

"This is what I mean, a Google alert, it's just a normal thing to have, even your friend has one," Claire mumbles distractedly from across the table, her eyes glued to the screen as she scrolls. "He didn't even know until I came over."

John straightens, clearly amused. "I'm sorry, I'm John," he says, leaning to offer a hand to her. She looks up, removes her glasses, then half-stands to shake his hand.

"Claire," she says. She smiles, with a gentler tone than for Sherlock, which is not endearing at all. "From Brown House publishers."

"Ah," John says, a question seemingly answered for him. "Nice to meet you."

He crouches down to see the screen better, one hand alighting on Sherlock's thigh under the table, the slowest graze of fingers. "Thought you'd replaced me," he murmurs to Sherlock, then, more audibly, "What are you two doing exactly?"

"Tracking down the author of the post, of course," Sherlock says. John looks up at him with an unreadable expression, but it fades quickly into a kind of indulgent smile.

"You're an idiot," he says as he stands, going to pull out from his bags paperbacks, hardcovers, paper-clipped photocopies. It takes a moment before Sherlock understands what he's seeing. "Maybe if you didn't drop out of university you'd know this, Sherlock--" John's amusement at this fact springs eternal-- "Go to the source."

Sherlock stands, almost dumbfounded. He sees Claire do the same from the corner of his eye. Somehow John has rounded up hardcopies.

"That's impossible--" Claire starts, picking up a stack of paper and flipping through. "How did you get these so fast? Someone at the office was looking, but..."

"Well, when I saw the post yesterday I was just curious," John says, unpacking the books and stacking them open at their bookmarked pages. "All these books, for the most part they're detritus, you know? None of these are well-known, none are even in print. I just wondered how this person chose them. My first thought was a library, of course, so I just looked up where copies were held, to see if maybe there was a geographic pattern there. As I was doing that I found out that semaphore one, the one where you were supposed to have got that ghost story from, was held nearby in the national library-- I was in Vienna," he explains to Claire. "So, I went over, and the second I saw it I realised... well, actually, where is it..." John trails off, hunting for a moment in the stack of photocopies. "It's-- oh, here. Look."

Sherlock takes the pages and skims, a little unsteadily with his insufficient German, but finds himself laughing nonetheless. He looks up at John, who grins back at him, rolls his eyes slightly at the absurdity of it.

Sherlock hands the pages to Claire for her to read, but she shakes her head slightly as she puts on her glasses. "I'm sorry, I never took German."

"The part that he was supposed to have stolen isn't there," John explains. "In the pages online, the author goes on a tangent to tell a kind of ghost story about a small boat lost at sea, the same as one in Sherlock's novel. In this he just tells a pretty boring story about his time in the military. They start the same way, the author basically says he is reminded of this anecdote-- whoever made the post just copied in Sherlock's text."

"So it's just... it's literally just very good photoshop," Claire says, taking the photocopy back to her computer to compare it to the fake. "Like, the fonts are _perfect_." She sounds almost irritated. Sherlock laughs again, John joining him, and for a moment he just flips through. John has had someone stamp and date the photocopies, as though for a certified document.

"The one commonality," Sherlock says. "They're not books people would have around to check on."

"And could feasibly stand to have some of your stuff snuck in, no one is familiar enough with them. The Austrian one is genius, I mean there's the effort to translate alone, but on top of that there's the humour of it? The idea that this writer would stop talking about salt damage on flags to tell about a horrible ghost story about his friends?"

"How on earth did you get your hands on them so fast, though?" Claire asks.

"Very late night. And just practice," John shrugs. "When you know where to look, it's just legwork. Most were in collections in London, I just picked them up after I got in. I had a used book dealer who likes me call around for the book of poems and the children's book. Also, well, when my flight got cancelled I asked if they could get me a flight with a stopover in Paris for a few hours, for the two French ones. So I got copies of those." John shoots Sherlock a vaguely apologetic look at that, but he's not entirely certain why. Sherlock is struck dumb by his effort, and his silence. "I asked a friend who studies in D.C. to pick up the American ones I found over there, so have scans in my email, and... oh, I found that romance novel on eBay, so that should be here sometime. Just to be thorough."

Sherlock feels unbearably foolish. He had been shown a rabbit drawn from a hat, and then spent two hours examining the stitching. He looks through the books in a kind of daze, taken by the strange sensation of having all offending passages disappear entirely. Some changes are clever, with small jokes, pointed jabs, embedded in the contrast between the original passages and Sherlock's text-- as though the intent all along was for the deception to be found and appreciated. He can't imagine the point of it.

John and Claire are discussing the logistics of scanning and sending copies of the books to her at the office. Sherlock starts to protest, thinking of the huge amount of work John had just put in, the dark shadows under his eyes, but then John catches Sherlock's eye with a faint smile that stops him dead. He goes to him without thinking to press a kiss above his eyebrow. John trails off mid-sentence, slips an arm around his waist. "You alright?"

Sherlock nods slightly. He's stupid, and entirely in his debt. 

"Well," Claire says, laughing a little. "If it's okay I'll take those duplicate photocopies back with me--"

"Yeah, just--" John squeezes Sherlock gently before moving away to go through the papers. "I'm sure I made two copies of each."

Sherlock helps them sort through, until Claire has a small pile tucked into her compendium. 

"That was fun," she says to Sherlock. "You know, I like your books."

"One day I'd like to read yours," Sherlock says, walking with her to the door. 

"When you work out who did it, let me know," she says conspiratorially. "John, nice to meet you. And thanks."

When Sherlock looks back to John he sees a the remnants of an unguarded expression, exhaustion, that quickly dissolves into a warm smile at Claire. "I'll email you this afternoon, probably."

Sherlock walks her out to the street, where a taxi arrives as if by magic to meet her. She gives him a quick squeeze of the arm, a kind of chin-up gesture, and then limps to the car in her poorly-fitting oxfords. When he returns upstairs John is lying draped the couch; as he draws closer he sees he's fallen asleep. He picks up a throw blanket and carries over, draping it over him as gently as he can. John gathers it to himself and turns on his side, but doesn't wake.

Sherlock lingers watching him for longer than he should, fighting a kind of disappointment at not being able to talk with him, finally. He's missed him, more than is healthy. 

He turns to the pile of books instead, the things he brought him, and takes them the scanner on John's desk. The least he can do is finish up, although he has to think of something else, some way to repay him. 

He had wanted the whole thing to disappear-- thanks to John, it will. He works through the books, paying no attention to the content. Outside, he hears it begin to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really want to write BAMF John at least once, but in this AU badass is apparently just research skills and knowing people who can get him whatever written material he needs, seriously guys, like any book just ask him


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This follows right from the last chapter, sorry for the ridiculous wait, writing sex is my kryptonite.

When John wakes he's in Sherlock's bed. The sky outside is bright but heavy with rain, making the room feel somehow clean, silvered. He only vaguely remembers moving there, having dimly decided that he needed some semblance of real sleep, and now it's impossible to guess the time. 

He'd been up too late last night, plotting out a pickup route, and woke early to pack and leave for the airport. Momentum had carried him from point to point through the day, but as soon as he had arrived home his strength had left him. He could sleep more, it's tempting, but instead he sighs, stretches his legs out. A delicious kind of post-nap stupor renders him languid and close to immobile. It's surprisingly wonderful to be in the white sheets of Sherlock's bed, who, when he thinks about it, he'd like very much to be languid with. 

The thought distracts him a moment. Barely able to do much more, he leans off the bed to pulls out his phone from the trousers he discarded, and texts him. As he waits he casts his eyes over the books that cover almost every available surface, as though the bookshelves had been left alone to spore. At least he's stopped sleeping with them piled on the other half of the bed, which is progress of a sort, although John likes to think his presence there is a reasonable enough incentive for change. 

As it eventually sinks in that Sherlock won't be coming, he half rolls, half drops out of bed, and heads to the kitchen. He had managed earlier to change into some clothes he found in a pile of clean laundry, one that Sherlock seemed to have carried from the dryer to drop directly on his bedroom floor. Exactly how Sherlock manages to consistently emerge from this same room looking as freshly pressed as he does is beyond him. 

He hitches up the pajama pants that sit slightly loose on his hips, and, realising his hunger, goes to look blankly into the almost-empty fridge. He eventually settles for a bowl of grapes he assumes were supplied by Mrs Hudson.

As he carries them out he finds Sherlock is on the couch reading. He looks up from his book with an odd expression of surprise, as though in the moment he had forgotten he was here. John gives a look, pointedly, at his phone, which sits within an arms reach, but Sherlock's bewildered frown frustrates him into letting it go.

"Did you sleep?" he asks, setting down his book as John drops to sit next to him.

"Beautifully," John says, picking through the bowl of grapes absently, then offering it to him. Sherlock shakes his head. "How are you feeling?"

"I sent scans to the office, so hopefully… it's done, I don't know."

"You did it already?" John asks, surprised. He's faintly relieved, not sure if he could have shaken off his torpor to do much work. 

"I'm not entirely useless," Sherlock murmurs. 

John breaks a grape between his molars, letting his eyes drift over Sherlock's face, the long length of his body, not entirely minding if he notices. He's wearing the green he's always liked him in, his shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, muscle there more pronounced than you might think at first glance. He eats another grape; it's best to keep a grip on his own reins. 

"Not entirely," he says, giving him a crooked smile Sherlock doesn't return.

"John."

”Sherlock," John repeats, mimicking his heavy tone. He drapes a leg over his lap, tucking the other under himself.

"Thank you."

John smiles, a little dopily he's sure, and leans to rest the side of his head against the back of the couch. "You're welcome."

"I mean it. You went to Paris?"

John laughs. "For you, I will go to Paris, I will go to Rome, I will go to Prague-- just say the word, I'll drag myself there, suffering so much, Sherlock..."

Sherlock huffs, probably more in annoyance than amusement, but John can't care, still dull from lingering drowsiness, and the surprising amount of joy he feels to be in his presence again. 

"Still, you looked so exhausted, sweetheart--" Sherlock trails off abruptly, the endearment clearly an accident. John bites back another laugh, looking down into the bowl of grapes.

"Well, your sweetheart was annoyed," he says. "Very annoyed. It's quite the motivator."

John can see Sherlock nod slightly, out of the corner of his eye. "If you called me I could have helped. All I did when I saw it was try to find the poster, I haven't even managed that--"

John looks up. He's disappointed in himself, he realises, with a burst of sympathy and affection at once.

"Of course," he says, gently. His tone is probably too sweet for Sherlock's liking, but he can't always help where he's at, emotionally-speaking. "You knew it was fake, of course you were more concerned with who, rather than what. That's why I didn't bother you with it, I knew you'd be looking elsewhere." This is true, and he derives no pleasure at all in being very good at something, and outshining Sherlock, for once. None whatsoever. 

Sherlock falls quiet. He nods slightly, but seems unsettled somehow. 

"Are you feeling alright about it?" 

"I'm not sure, just yet."

"It's bothering you?" 

"No... not that, not the identity, more..." Sherlock looks away. "I'm not sure if I was fully sure that I didn't do it. Considering my circumstances."

John frowns. It takes him a moment to understand what he's implying. 

"It's possibly more the fact that I had a moment of doubt, than the doubt itself. Does that make sense?"

"It makes sense," John says. "It makes sense that would bother you. I just suppose..." He hesitates a moment, eating two grapes in quick succession. "I suppose I worry, if you feel that amount of guilt. If when someone accuses you of something bad, something patently false, and a part of you thinks yes, I suppose I might have."

Sherlock pauses. He seems unhappy with that. "Should I not feel guilty?"

"The only one you were hurting was yourself."

Sherlock avoids John's eyes, leaning back. John's not quite sure if he's annoyed, or just pensive. He slides his leg a little against Sherlock's thigh, and is rewarded with some solid eye contact, which he takes as a good sign.

"The guilt is probably that I never really feel like I'm really finished with it.

John nods slightly. Sherlock doesn't mention it often, in fact John knows very little, but still more than Sherlock is aware of. A week or so after they had returned from the beach house, John has been stopped on campus by a incredibly well-dressed driver, who had under some duress convinced him to come and speak with someone waiting in a black, idling car. As soon as the window rolled down, John had seen the resemblance-- although someone with less hours clocked staring at a Holmes family member may have not not make the connection. He had acquiesced to a car ride, where Mycroft laid things out. He had told him he was aware of their newly hatched romantic involvement, that while they did not communicate at present, he has means of keeping an eye on his little brother. Remembering Sherlock's talk of a bugged apartment, John had maintained an air of blockheadedness long enough to get out of Mycroft that he was intercepting Sherlock's text messages. _Only outgoing, naturally, John, anything else would be a gross invasion of privacy_ , rights to which Sherlock had presumably lost access to. 

The gist of the rest of the conversation involved bad-mouthing Sherlock in a way that was presumably intended to cool John's heels, but unfortunately for Mycroft had the opposite effect of making him hard-headed and indignant. He had known about the drugs, the rehab, the bad behavior. He hadn't known about the rehab at eighteen, the number of hospitalisations, the health scare spoken about with heavy, leading euphemism, or the almost arrest that was apparently Mycrofted away. He still wishes he didn't, for Sherlock's sake, who he knows would be incandescent if he found out what Mycroft had done, and what John hadn't told him. Eventually John had managed to have the car stop, and left telling Mycroft what he still believes: that Sherlock worked to get clean, and continues to work. That being loved won't hurt him, and that he is. It still stings that he had told his brother this before he told Sherlock himself.

Mycroft had left him with look of something close to pity, and a business card with nothing but a number on it that John had, despite himself, kept. He later engineered a drop of Sherlock's phone into the Thames, although he's unsure of any good it did.

"It's not the same now," John says softly. "There's no locking yourself away this time. If you fuck up, I'll be here to rain down fury on you." His voice grows firmer than his smile would indicate. "I'll make your life a living nightmare."

When Sherlock laughs, John widens his eyes in mock astonishment. "You have no idea, Sherlock Holmes. You think your brother was bad?"

"I don't doubt you, John." John smiles at him, and looks down once he can't continue to meet Sherlock's eyes on him. "Tomorrow we can find who did it, yes? It won't take you long, now you have your real assistant," John glances up with a grin. "No pretty blondes to distract you…"

"Pretty?" Sherlock repeats, sounding faintly suspicious. 

"I'm just interested in how quickly you roped her into being your John surrogate," John says, tone deliberately light. "You work fast. Blonde, short, bookish… you really have a type, I suppose...

"I do not," Sherlock says in a tone that makes John laugh for its indignance, sounding like a child being teased about their crush.

"Ah, you don't…" John murmurs. "I don't know, I've met some of your ex so-called friends. There's a type."

"Oh?"

"Shitheads." It's probably best not to get too much into that, and the strange mix of jealousy and dogged protectiveness he feels whenever he meets someone from Sherlock's past life. 

"Mm, is that a type enough for you? An exclusive group of men with eye coordination enough to look my way…" Sherlock says absently, running his palm slowly down John's shin. John frowns, tries to take it for the joke it is, but Sherlock pauses when he doesn't reply, his fingers lingering at the exposed skin of his ankle.

"So... I'm not the only one who gets jealous," he says softly, seeming faintly amused.

"Who do you have to be jealous of?" John laughs. "None of my exes are wandering up to me on the street to slime it up…" 

"They're not exes. They're nothing. Less than."

John shrugs. It's not that he doesn't want to talk about it. His curiosity is almost unbearable, although he isn't proud of it. 

"I don't mean I have a wandering eye. You know that."

"Of course," John says quickly. He's not sure why is laugh is so unsteady, he knows what he said is true, without a doubt. It's not like him, he's never been a jealous sort, but still, there's no other word for it. It doesn't suit him.

When he looks up at him again, Sherlock suddenly gives him an odd, sympathetic smile. John laughs slightly, almost embarrassed, but a quieter part of him swells with a kind of gratitude for what he takes as his wordless understanding. Maybe it doesn't have to make sense.

"You're wearing my clothes," Sherlock says gently, changing the subject. John laughs again. 

"That okay?"

"More than." Sherlock's fingers flutter into movement again, sliding to his thigh. 

John sets his bowl on the floor and goes to lean against him, letting himself be gathered close. He finds himself sighing as he settles his head on his shoulder, Sherlock's arm around his waist. Just to be close eases another hunger, one he didn't realise he was suffering from. Sherlock's body is warm, solid against him, and for a while the simple fact of that is enough to occupy him. 

"I'm very happy you're home," Sherlock says into his hair, his hand slipping under the back the loose t-shirt he's wearing. 

"Me too," John mumbles, turning his head to the crook of his neck to breathe in the warm scent of his skin. "God, I think about you a lot..."

He smiles as he feels Sherlock laugh. "Good things, or..."

"Don't ask."

"Oh," Sherlock says significantly. His soft fingertips follow some mysterious route along his back, although taking detailed measure of him. 

"I was going to tell you some on the phone the other day, but I chickened out."

"Is that what you call falling asleep?" 

John laughs, closing his eyes. "I thought it might be a good attempt at... what's the word we're using? Trying. I wish I had." He looks up to see Sherlock's face. "Your voice on the phone."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow, a smile coming faint enough for an inexperienced viewer to miss it. John arches his back slightly from Sherlock's palm, as if to asking to be traced there anew. He had been thinking of what Sherlock had asked him for, for honesty, and how to give it to him. He's thought about it too much, surely, when the point must be to not think at all. 

Sherlock lowers his head to kiss John's cheek. "I would have liked it," he says softly. "I was entirely in your hands."

John murmurs. He reaches for the buttons of Sherlock's shirt, grazing cloth against skin before gently unfastening one, then another. "Sherlock, that's where I want you."

When Sherlock closes the space between them he feels his breath leave him, both of Sherlock's hands going into his hair. As soon as he feels his lips, then, quickly, the familiar draw of his tongue, he wonders what the point of worrying much about anything was. John leans up into him, letting Sherlock guide him slowly, gorgeously, melting him down with every sweep of his hands along his body. Of course he still has admirers, he thinks dimly. The thought of him when he was younger, wilder, attempting in earnest to seduce someone is formidable. 

Sherlock tugs him into his lap, and John sinks single mindedly back into the kiss. He strokes the back of his hair, his neck, his shoulders, until Sherlock shifts to kiss him deeply enough to make him still, all thoughts narrowing to the sweep of his tongue he's powerless to do anything but meet. He leans into him, following the kind of rhythm Sherlock sets, hot and thorough and insistent.

"Sherlock..." he finds himself sighing as Sherlock moves to his neck, his throat with the same intensity, his hands gripping his waist under his shirt. 

"Talk to me," Sherlock says against his skin, increasing the pressure of his nails into his skin enough to hurt, deliciously so. John breathes something not quite a word, his eyes falling closed, every sentence he could start dissolved in the movement of his mouth against his skin, the maddening promise of his teeth at his throat. 

"You did miss me," he finds himself saying, pulling his head up to kiss him, rocking forward into his body. Sherlock curls both hands in his hair, holding him to the kiss that grows quickly rough again.

He shouldn't be surprised to feel his own boyfriend's erection, but it's rare for it to be unambiguous, and John can't hold back a soft intake of breath as he notices it. He smiles, Sherlock still holding his head close. If they're ever going to try for more, surely this would be the first step, for Sherlock to feel safe acknowledging his own arousal.

"I missed you." Sherlock's lips move hot against his flushed skin. "I wanted you."

John can't help but feel himself react. "After we talked I had this idea I'd come home and be so good to you..." he says, turning his head to speak to Sherlock's ear, spreading his hands against his chest. "I was in my hotel bed and thinking about that..."

"You're not being good, John?" Sherlock asks. His voice is quiet, honeyed. 

"I can be better," John almost whispers the words, punctuating with a kiss to Sherlock's ear that drifts to his jaw. "I wanted to see you like were on the phone, but with my hands on you, Sherlock..."

Sherlock makes a soft sound, one that makes something inside of John come loose for him. He swallows. _He likes to hear. Tell him._

John slides his hands down Sherlock's chest to linger at his waistband, fingering the fabric there gently as he speaks. It feels like a risk, but he wants to take it. "On the phone the other night, if I had asked you? Would you have have come for me if I asked you?"

"John..." He takes John's wrists, John's first thought is that he wants to move his hands away, but it quickly dawns it's the opposite; he wants to still him there. "Yes."

He hovers his hand along the hard length of him through his trousers, barely touching. When he looks up to see Sherlock's face he almost regrets it, immediately losing his words as he sees him, pupils blown, and a kind of hardness behind them, a hunger rare for it being so freely shown to him. Although, that isn't true entirely. He's tried, again and again, and John has stopped him. 

"Please," Sherlock nods, as though the question had been asked, and with a small sound John presses his palm to him. Sherlock drops his head, but John slides his fingers to his jaw, tipping it up. 

"You're so fucking gorgeous," he says quietly, a heat to his voice. "Look at me."

He moves his hand slowly against him at first, exploratory, unable to break his eyes away from his face, watching him for any sign of indecision. As Sherlock takes a shuddering breath, John leans forward to kiss his cheek, rolling his palm against the head through the fabric.

"The second you want to stop," he murmurs, brushing his lips to the slight graze of his jaw. "You're going to tell me right away, aren't you?"

"Not yet." Sherlock almost rumbles the words, making John's eyes flutter briefly closed. He unbuttons his trousers, sliding his hand under his pants to touch him properly. He glances at Sherlock's face for permission, and at his nod he draws him out and looks down at him, biting back a laugh as he wraps his hand around the length. He's beautiful; in his hand he's generous, heavy, perfect. 

"I'm not sure laughter is the desired response..." Sherlock asks, the effect of his indignation undermined by his hitch at the movements of John's fingers.

"Oh, Sherlock…" John finds himself fairly purring the words, leaning close to his mouth, stroking along him in a slow, twisting motion. "Are you insecure about your perfect body?"

Sherlock laughs unsteadily as he looks down to where John works his hand, his expression the same one of focussed curiosity he's seen elsewhere thousands of times. The effect it has on him is almost startling, arousal and something else, a sense of unreality. John can't stop monitoring him for any sign of uncertainty, even as he starts to find a pace, causing him to lean his head back against the couch with a kind of shiver. 

John sets himself close, lips at his pulse in his throat, then at his ear again. "I came thinking of that, later," John says softly, watching for a reaction that comes back to him with interest, Sherlock's eyes sliding closed as he takes an unsteady breath. "You at home in my bed..."

"Tell me," Sherlock says in a breath. His throat works as John concentrates attention on the head of his cock, working the slit carefully. 

"You're how I imagined," John murmurs. "I thought of your hand on yourself like this, needing me to talk you to it, on the edge for me..." 

When Sherlock murmurs his name, John has to fight the urge to slide to his knees and take him in his mouth, to give him more. He fixes his eyes on him instead, feeling himself weaken at the way Sherlock watches him through dark lashes with a surprisingly trusting expression. It's all he can do to watch him back, weak with adoration he doesn't know what to do with. It must be on his face, because Sherlock leans to kiss him, gently this time, as though fine co-ordination is beyond him. As John tightens his grip around him he breaks away, lingering close enough to share breath, his hands fluttering over his waist.

It's surprising how easily he receives pleasure, how wholly contained he seems. He's faintly innocent, accepting everything John gives him with a flicker of eyelashes, a soft exhalation, a brief drop of his head. It strikes him how inexperienced he is compared to Sherlock, with men at least, how limited his skill set. The thought makes him redouble his efforts, looking down to focus entirely on the silken texture of him against his own skin, the way the neves in his fingertips must speak to his own, more sensitive ones. For a long time he's lost to it, caught up in a feedback loop of Sherlock's increasingly unsteady breathing and his own pounding heart.

"Do you how long I was alone in that bed, like you the other night, crazy with wanting you... do you know what you do to me?"

Sherlock fists a hand in John's hair, looking up at him as John rises slightly from his lap to rest his weight on his knees. He can't hold back a soft moan at the way Sherlock tenses as he begins to work his hand faster, leaning his head briefly to his chest.

"John, please..." 

"Yes," John says, his breath growing heavier. "Yes, I thought of you doing that, you saying my name... I thought of saying yours, too, baby, begging you..." 

Sherlock looks increasingly lost, holding John's body as close as he can without impeding his movement. He nods dazedly as John speaks, his words seeming to have as much an impact on him as his hand does. "I'm going to beg you soon, for you to come for me, Sherlock..."

Sherlock almost growls and pulls him down into a kiss, his hand pulling at his hair just enough to stoke a fire inside him. He thinks of what Sherlock's body must be calling for now, pressure, friction, and tries to keep presence of mind enough to give it to him. 

"That's it..." John says as Sherlock rocks into his hand, bracing a palm on John's thigh. His own arousal is dazing him, every movement, every detail of Sherlock's body sending him deeper. John feels he can sense how close he is, almost as though the sensation is his as well. He holds his gaze, his pace steady.

"I need to see you, show me, please..." he says softly, and that does it. Sherlock suddenly dissolves, gripping him, coming hot into his hand. John gentles his strokes, so lost in how he looks that he barely notices what he's murmuring to him, only that it makes Sherlock shudder and pull him down to him. 

John can't stay away from Sherlock's mouth, his soft hair, even as he tries to temper himself, to let Sherlock come down. It doesn't help that Sherlock's hands are immediately on his skin, lifting his loose shirt with their movement along his sides, nor that the kiss he leans up to take from him is immediately deep, unrelenting. 

Sherlock manages to strip him of his shirt and lay him on his back in one movement, pressing him into the couch cushions. To be covered by him feels perfect, his body curving unthinkingly into his, thighs parted to let him settle between then.

He had an idea to leave it here, to let Sherlock process one thing at a time, but with Sherlock over him, his body seems to be able to shut his better instincts down. He sees it in Sherlock too, a combination of intent and need that seems to grow as John reacts hungrily to every stroke of Sherlock's hands along his bare skin, every detail of the movement of his lips along his neck.

"Please," he finds himself murmuring, tipping his head back to expose more skin to him as Sherlock's lips graze the hollow of his throat. He runs his fingers along the back of Sherlock's neck into his hair, tracing the curve of his skull, partially because he knows it pleases him, partially to keep him close. His eyes fall closed at the path Sherlock traces with his lips, jaw to collarbone, his fingers moving absently to draw in slow patterns through Sherlock's hair. 

Sherlock sinks his teeth to the junction of neck and shoulder, just pressure at first, then suddenly harder. John shudders, a moan escaping, tightening his thighs around him. 

"You like that, don't you?" Sherlock murmurs, licking the mark he made. 

"Apparently..." John says without thinking, which is enough to pique something in Sherlock. He looks up at him, tracing the mark with the ball of his thumb. Before John needs to tell him, _when you do it_ , Sherlock's worked it out, his expression changing to interested comprehension. It's beyond John to feel disturbed by it, not when he's in this kind of disarray, not with Sherlock dropping to kiss him, possessively, holding his face between both hands.

Sherlock slides a hand under his borrowed pyjama pants to touch him, murmuring a kind of approval as John wraps his arms around his shoulders, lets out a shuddering breath. If Sherlock couldn't read him like a book, the sounds he makes at his hand on him would give him away. He's embarrassingly close already, he has no immunity yet to the power Sherlock has over him, his own hunger for him. 

He moans as Sherlock draws his pants down further to stroke him harder, faster, seeming to sense he needs no preamble, just action. His eyes fall closed again, clutching at the body that can't press close enough to his own. He's lost enough to him that when Sherlock stops the kind of whimper that comes from his throat almost surprises him. He looks up at him, very close to pleading, but then Sherlock slides down his body, his hot breath against screaming nerves the only warning before Sherlock bows to take him in his mouth. John stills in a kind of gasp, Sherlock immediately angling to take him deep.

John can barely process what he's doing with his mouth, only aware of a pleasure that drives every thought from his mind. Sherlock takes him unbelievably fluidly, John can feel his whole mouth working around him as he swallows again and again, as though his intention is to drive him immediately to the edge. 

It's all he can do from drowning in it, tipping his head back as his body arches. He's dimly aware that he's making sounds, half moaning, half entreaty, that sound foreign to his own ears. He has to straighten his fingers to stop from pulling Sherlock's hair, tense to stop rocking unconsciously into the heat his mouth, yet Sherlock denies him nothing. John can feel the head of his cock grazing the back of his throat, but Sherlock shows no sign of discomfort, no need to slow. 

"Oh my god..." John says under his breath, running two hands over Sherlock's hair, suddenly aware that he can feel the movement he makes from inside and out of his body at the same time. "Sherlock, I'm..."

Sherlock strokes the inside of John's thigh, a strange gesture of comfort that has the opposite effect, making him shudder with the sensation of being completely at his mercy, under his care. For a long while there's no thought at all but him, the way his body is beckoned and answers, the rhythm and the parameters Sherlock sets-- heat, movement, pressure-- at the exclusion of all else.

"Please..." John grits his teeth; even acknowledging how close he is is almost enough to send him over. "Sherlock, Sherlock..." He grips his shoulders, unable to control a shift of his hips into him, at the same time trying to warn him, give him notice. Sherlock looks up at him in a way that sets every nerve alight, wrings a moan from him, then lowers his head to seat him deeper again with an unmistakable deliberateness. John curls his fingers, gives into the incredible warmth of his mouth, and to Sherlock himself. He lets Sherlock sweep him out to a wave of orgasm that floods him, wipes him clean, leaving him helpless to the sensation of Sherlock swallowing him, stroking him.

He drops his head back, struggling to regain his breath, every thought fixed on Sherlock's movements, his mouth still on him, his hands tracing his sensitised skin. He shudders as Sherlock's mouth slips from him, drawing himself back up along his body.

"Holy fuck," John says weakly, leaning up to pull him roughly into a kiss, curling around him. Sherlock presses him down, his full weight on him, so that all John can do his melt into him, gripping tight. "Oh my god..." he manages, when Sherlock draws back enough to let him speak, his hands fisted uselessly in his shirt. "How the fuck are you so good at that?"

"Do you really want to know?" Sherlock says dryly, giving him a lopsided smile. John touches his cheeks, staring up at him dumbly, still breathing hard and lulled by the effects of orgasm.

"My god..." John says again, the best he can come up with in the moment, drawing Sherlock down to rest their foreheads together. "You okay?"

"Are you?"

" _No_ ," John jokes breathlessly, closing his eyes as he feels Sherlock laugh. "Fuck, you are... just..."

Sherlock kisses John's eyelids, his brow, then draws him to lay beside him, his arm tight around his waist. John curls close, sliding one leg over his, the previous tide waning to leave behind a warmth that spreads through him, an indiscriminate tenderness. Sherlock tips his head up, stroking his cheek, then pulls him into a slow kiss, his hands running slowly over his cooling skin.

"It's because of you," Sherlock murmurs. John nods uncomprehendingly, distracted by the kiss, the graze of his fingertips. It's another moment before his meaning settles in his stomach like a stone. 

"Don't fucking say that," he says, urgently. Sherlock grips him before he can pull away. 

"There's no way I wouldn't have relapsed, if I hadn't met you. It's the truth. It doesn't make it your responsibility, but it's the truth."

John closes his eyes; it's hard to convey his irritation when every part of his body still wants him close. "Don't. It's unhealthy to think like that."

Sherlock nods and touches John's cheek, as though to call his attention to him. "I'm trying to say that I'm different. You made things different."

John sighs, turning his head to press a kiss to his palm. "I'm on your side, always," he says against his skin. "We're a team, aren't we?"

"Yes..." 

"So no fucking self-defeating shit." 

Sherlock laughs in a way that makes John join him, automatically.

"I'm feeling a lot of things for you right now, Sherlock," he whispers.

"Me too."

John smiles, then groans slightly and tugs Sherlock into a tight hug, pressing his face to his shoulder. "You're my best fucking friend."

"Are you breaking up with me?" Sherlock jokes, but the way his fingers curl, his body slackens into John's gives him away. John squeezes his eyes closed, takes a deep breath.

"Proposing, maybe," he teases back, a not-really joke.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah gosh sorry if this gets posted twice, weird things are happening my end how do I use computers

Even amongst its nearly identical neighbours, the terrace house they arrive at is distinguishable by its air of poor maintenance, shabby like an unloved pet, red paint peeling from its door. Sherlock knocks decisively, then seems to reconsider, steps back for John to handle the talking. 

Any afterglow of the night before was quickly cast aside in favour of the rolling up of sleeves, something clicking over to compel them to keep tracking the author of the post. Sherlock had done most of the footwork before John came home, in fact probably would have found his lead earlier if not for John's interruption, his eye for minutiae and speech patterns allowing him to track a daisy chain of screen names from site to site until he reached to one real one. 

Mainly John is relieved, profoundly, that Sherlock felt comfortable enough to be in his presence after sleeping with him, which is all in all a marked improvement from the first time. And more, he's relieved that things are normal, jocular, easy. He's not entirely sure what Sherlock is feeling, but that is a state of affairs he's at least used to. The amorphous feeling of guilt, too, is familiar enough to not get badly underfoot.

The man that answers the door is mid-thirties, balding early, and wearing a t-shirt John is sure was bought probably bought at some kind of convention. He looks at Sherlock with enough intent to send a ripple of concern through the two of them for Sherlock being recognised, but it quickly becomes clear it's interest of another sort. John, resigned to this, takes the lead.

"Max Walder?" 

"That's me." His voice has a Transatlantic quality to it.

"My name is Martin, and this is my colleague Bruce–" John tries not to smile, seeing Sherlock bristle at this out of the corner of his eye. "Do you have a few minutes?"

"About what?" Max's eyes narrow behind his Ray Bans-- a surprising conceit to aesthetics, considering the large coffee stain on his shirt. 

"We're private investigators hired by A. C. Smith's publishers to look into a post you recently made online."

If Max seems disturbed by this he doesn't show it. "Oh," he shrugs, opening the door to let them in. "That. Sure."

Max turns and walks inside, Sherlock muttering _Bruce_ under his breath as he walks through the door John holds open for him. Inside the house is dim, with what looks like a purple bed sheet tacked up to serve as a curtain in the living room. It lends the room's colours a faintly bruised quality. The gloom does something at least to hide the dust, which on closer inspection accumulates on every lesser-used surface of the beat up furniture, and on the faintly familiar looking piles of junk. He can see Sherlock go silently into his odd scanning mode, and resolves to do his part to leave him to it.

"Tell the truth, I was pretty damn shocked about how big it got," Max says, picking up a large bottle of soda from beside his computer. "Like, who would have thought anyone would give a fuck." He draws out the last three words a sardonic edge enough surely to sting poor Sherlock, the indignity doubled by his aggressor eye fucking him while simultaneously swigging a bottle of warm cola.

"It certainly had some legs," John says, affecting a tone of professional disinterest. "So, you were the author of the post?"

"Yeah, sure, I wrote it up." Max drops onto a rolling chair. "I mean, I did most of it."

"So you worked with someone else?"

"Not really-- you're here to work out who hired me, right?"

"Didn't think you'd tell us so easily, but yes," John bluffs, perching on the arm of his beat up sofa, affecting a similar slouch. "Our client just wants to know who is up to it, author's up for a big prize right now, they think it might have something to do with that-- a rival publisher, or author, you know."

"Can't help you, sorry. Totally anonymous. Just dealt with them by email, they sent me some cash in the post up front. I mean, I've done this kind of stuff online for money, astroturfing, that kinda shit, but I've never had anyone been so cloak and dagger about it before."

"So how'd you get hired? Do you think it was an old client?"

"Nah, actually, they mentioned my research, I think it's someone's little more highbrow. Guess they read a paper or something."

"Your research?"

"Yeah..." Max looks oddly bored by this. "I'm doing some postdoc research on, like, notions of obscurity." He yawns. "Channels and methods of obscurity, you know, focussing on publishing. How do you conceptualise obscurity, how is it defined... actually, when you're talking about obscure texts you can talk about hope, the hope of a self-published author, say, or failure. Failure to join that main stream, failure to exist on in cultural memory. So then, you look into how capitalistic structures of distribution produce and also rely on the existence of obscurity, you know, does populism exist an other to define it as such, so..."

"What heuristics are you using?" John finds himself asking without meaning to, head cocked, but quickly changes the topic as Sherlock clears his throat. Private detective, right. "You think whoever hired you knew about your research and thought you'd have access to rare books."

"Right, yeah, which I do. Obviously." Max casts a hand around. John nods, the apartment puts Sherlock's hoarding to shame. "I mean I think it was a bit of a leap on their part, obviously I'm not referencing a huge number of specific rare books, junk books, whatever, it's not a foregone conclusion I would have all this crap lying around, the research is crit theory mainly. But I already had an interest in this stuff, used to manage a used bookstore when I was doing my PhD, so they got lucky. I just dug some stuff out and went to work."

"I see." John can see Sherlock's eyes still sweeping the room, silently vacuuming up information, so he presses on. "Obviously we're more interested in your patron. You have no ideas about an identity?"

Max leans back in his chair, his gaze lazily drifting off to Sherlock over and over, like a magnetic pull. John is tiring of it quickly. 

"Someone educated, I guess. Well, they were specific that it should sound, what's the word, _internetty_. But they were pretty formal themselves in their emails. Throwaway email account, obviously. To be honest, I didn't know the books, they gave me a few specific passages to mention. Like they were important. I guess they were, those parts were the ones the forum went really psycho about."

"Could you give me the email address?"

Max shrugs, spins around on his chair to tap his computer awake. "Why not. Won't be much use to you though. I googled it and everything."

Sherlock drifts over to Max at his computer like a dark shadow, leans close with one palm on the desk. "Actually, could you possibly print your email exchanges?" he asks, his tone irritating for its deliberate silkiness. John rolls his eyes behind their backs as the printer shudders into life.

Even in the overcast weather, John has to blink slightly as his eyes adjust to the light as they step outside. Sherlock glances at John with a flicker of amusement, then passes him to head out to the wide, eerily deserted street. John trots forward to fall into step with him, turning up his collar at the drizzle. 

"Any ideas?" he asks while they're out of earshot and eyeline.

"That I need a bath."

"Could have asked when you were in there," John jokes. "He would have been delighted…"

Sherlock shakes his head but says nothing, hands jammed into his pockets, seeming to withdraw into his own thoughts again. It's bad, but John doesn't entirely want him there. He lets himself drift close enough for their arms to brush.

"We haven't talked about it, so..." he hesitates. "I just want to be sure last night was alright. Is alright."

Sherlock nods, but doesn't look at him, the light rain catching in the flyaway strands of his hair like some kind of ornamentation. "I think so."

"Oh," John says, vaguely. Not the most flattering appraisal he's been given, but not exactly unexpected. "If it wasn't, I won't be hurt. It was in the moment, I know."

"Possibly I'm relieved."

"Oh, good," John says, the upbeat note in his voice sounding almost ridiculous for its overcompensation. Sherlock doesn't seem to notice. He unfolds the email printouts and reads without slowing his step.

John drops behind him slightly, feeling faintly like he's been dismissed. He pulls out his phone and checks his email. Feedback from his supervisor, notice of a friend's exhibition opening in Frankfurt, a cat related email from his sister. The grey clouds feel suddenly lower, oppressive. He fixes his eyes on the footpath instead, the greyness of it like a dim reflection of the sky. 

Ahead of him Sherlock's phone rings. It's oddly heartening to see him immediately pick up, for once. Ever since his nomination he's been treating his phone as if it's some kind of cursed object, impossible to dispose of. Instead it lingers at his periphery, usually silenced, sometimes there in his pocket, battery dead for a day or more. 

Sherlock doesn't speak much, making vague sounds of assent, his pace picking up, as though trying to move out of John's earshot. _Doesn't feel great_. His thoughts briefly touch down a memory of on the night before, thinking of how he had spoken to him in the moment, his own eagerness, then with a jolt of something like shame sets to flight again, like a skittish winged insect. He rubs his forehead. 

He lets himself fall behind Sherlock as much as possible, his pace more of a wander than a walk now. He wonders how long it would take to walk home alone, to work off the kind of tension he can feel building up, like a breached hull filling up with water. It's not healthy for his moods to be so tied to what he perceives of Sherlock's. 

When Sherlock stops and turns back to him ahead, the look on his face makes John's step falter. The little of his normal colour is gone. John frowns slowly.

"Look me up," Sherlock says, nodding towards the phone in John's hand as he catches up to him. "My real name."

With a sense of foreboding, John does.

 _Plagiarism scandal author A.C. Smith's identity revealed,_ reads the first article. John looks up at him, hardly needing to read further. 

Sherlock looks away, shrugs slightly. "It makes sense now."

"Was this that fucking slob back there?" John says, his voice coming with an edge that surprises even him. Giving it even a second's more thought makes him feel slightly ridiculous for asking. They'd left there only ten minutes ago. 

"He's nothing," Sherlock murmurs. "No, this is all… something personal. I was shortsighted."

"What was it?"

"A setup."

John frowns, nodding slowly in realisation. Sherlock has his readers, fans, even, but is hardly a widely recognisable name. John had been wondering about the strangeness of the accusations themselves, and how they came out of nowhere, perfectly crafted to disperse and then self destruct. They were never intended to stand up to examination in the first place. They needed to be strange enough, obscure enough to last just enough time it would take to generate articles that would lay the groundwork of media interest for this, the main course. They were a delivery mechanism, a vector, a booster that detaches after takeoff. 

"Do you have enemies, Sherlock Holmes?" John says conspiratorially, but his faint smile isn't returned. Sherlock looks nauseated, unsteady, absent. John takes his phone from him and slips it into his own pocket for safekeeping.

"We'll take care of it," he says gently, brushing his fingers against Sherlock's now-empty palm. "Let's go home."

"You must think I'm overly sensitive."

"No," John says quickly. "I understand. I really do."

Sherlock looks at him searchingly, almost skeptically, a look John returns with practiced guilelessness. "Come on, fuck the Tube, let's find a cab."

Sherlock drifts alongside John, lets him ferry him into a cab, lets his forearm be stroked slightly by John as the car picks up speed. 

John looks back at the article left open on his phone. The contents are not surprising, what new biographical details they were able to amass in a hurry; his location, his Oxford admission, extremely brief tenure writing reviews for an independent student newspaper, his expulsion. There's a recap of the accusations, then of his work in general. 

Of more immediate interest to John is an accompanying photo on the top of the page shot on slightly grainy black and white film, making it seem from the distant past. It was clearly taken by someone with an eye, a professional, possibly, something from god knows where in the paper's archives. _The author during his time at Oxford._ Sherlock looks shockingly young; John had forgotten how early he had graduated high school. His is hair even wilder, and he sits forward on a couch at what looks to be some dimly-lit party. The people he is speaking to are seen only from behind, leaving him gesturing to the air with a cigarette, looking as though he's holding the floor. It is not an unflattering photo. It looks, dare he say, authorly. John finds himself surreptitiously tapping and holding the image, saving it to his phone. 

At home, Sherlock refuses tea, refuses food, refuses distraction. He sits by the living room window, tapping ash into a half-empty teacup, seeming to register almost nothing around him. John retreats to his bedroom with his laptop to pour through the articles that have come out, more seemingly each refresh. An recluse unmasked is even more potent click bait than libellous plagiarism accusations, it seems. 

The phone John took from Sherlock rings with unknown numbers almost constantly. John puts it on silent, but within eyesight. When he finally reemerges to speak with him, Sherlock is gone.

  


* * *

  


It's almost disturbing for Sherlock to think of how much time had wasted here, muddled and alone on his habitual half-shadowed stool in the corner of his half-shadowed habitual pub, and how easily he had returned after so many months. Looking at the worn wood of the bar he can see the tiny etches he had made at the edge with his thumbnail, stoned out of his mind. He remembered how those things like that had occupied him, the satisfaction of the membrane of varnish cracking under his nail, the give of the wood underneath. He tries it again for good measure, but that sensory awareness, that intense focus is missing.

He drains his glass, barely needs to signal for another before it's brought for him. He nods a thank you, folds his arms and slouches a little, as if to properly contemplate it. 

It seems impossible that something as dear to him as his anonymity can seem even dearer in its absence. 

He's overreacting, of course. Some last vestige of sense signals that to him, no matter how diligently Sherlock attempts to drown it. John would tell him, too, if he had given him any chance. How can he convey what it meant to him to be able to write as someone else, to send that thing into the world as someone else, to feel as if he could bypass his own increasingly loathed self entirely. Even if this fantasy of self negation was one he had invented, it was still a fantasy that was sustaining. What's the point of even finding who did this to him, now?

He remembers the first time he thought of it, the relief at the idea, the utter freedom it suddenly granted him. Possibly it is a cowardly thing-- no, definitely, a cowardly thing, to be so completely dependent on this one condition. His pen name isn't for political reasons, after all, nor for personal safety, or to protect him from bravely breaking social and moral convention. But he's never had any notion of being a good person, a brave person. He's a barely functioning person, one who found a single, blissful recess in which to bury himself, a recess untouchable by his many personal failings, by drugs, by rehab, by the nothingness that was post rehab, by even the unabating joy and dread that is his relationship with John. To come to find its entrance boarded up and inaccessible is unbearable. To have it taken from him is unbearable. 

The amount he's thinking of is small, so small it would be practically homeopathic. Homeopathic in more ways than one, like curing like. After all, if he's worried about relapsing, isn't it best to face that fear? A small amount, just enough to get through the night, to be able to go home to John and not sit here, atrophying alone. And after, wouldn't there a be sort of freedom for the worst to have happened, with no one knowing, and no consequence. And when will he ever need it more than right now? Until John leaves, at least. He had never expected this to come first.

The mental calculations are enough to absorb him until his glass is finished. Before he's tempted to stall by ordering another, he makes up his mind. 

John is working at the table in the living room when he returns, a constellation of open books spread around him. Sherlock drifts over to look at them, each page open to medieval renderings of human bodies, vivisected and cross sectioned, the contents of each body wildly inaccurate, fantastical, and for a brief moment, terrifying. John is looking up at him, but he can't seem to take his eyes away. One body contains three swollen and enormous organs, another, tiny animals, another, only an intricate web of delicate red veins. 

John pushes up the long sleeves of his cardigan, wraps one arm around Sherlock's waist, presses a kiss to his side. Sherlock feels for a moment some buried part of him curling up with regret, like a salted leech, but it's quickly lost in the gale of more pressing sensations. 

"Was wondering where you'd got to."

"Sorry," Sherlock murmurs. "I was embarrassed."

John's eyebrow quirk slightly like that, and Sherlock mentally shakes himself. He wouldn't say that normally.

"I was drinking."

"No kidding," John says slowly, sounding faintly amused. "Do you want to eat something?"

"No," Sherlock says, too emphatically. "Not right now. Eat if you want to."

"Do you want to talk?"

Sherlock considers this. His most pressing desire is to be supine, covered by something. A blanket, perhaps. Or John. The thought of it brings him up short. He touches John's hair, the softness of it almost startling, absorbing. He stares at him for longer than he should, feeling each strand against his fingertips, then lowers his head to kiss him there, twice, John suddenly feeling like the source of all warmth in the world. To think only an hour ago he was worried about anything at all is almost laughable. To have thought that anything else matters.

"I've had too much to drink. Lie down with me?" he asks against his hair, closing his eyes as John strokes his hand along his hip. 

"'Course," John murmurs, closing the lid of his laptop with his free hand. He leads him to the bedroom, kicks off his slippers, and slides under the covers, holding them open for Sherlock. Sherlock feels a kind of relief to be lying down, the swim of his head, the steady waves of peace that seem to come further and further ashore feel more manageable when still. He's out of practice, a lightweight, now. He closes his eyes, feels John stroke his stomach gently, settle by him. 

"It's really going to be okay," John whispers, his voice seeming to come from a distance, further away than his body, which feels closer than their two layers of clothes would allow. His heart beats faster as he thinks in a rush of the expanse of hidden skin beside him, remembers his bare thighs, the taste of him in his mouth. Thinks of how his voice had dissolved into non words, and how they would again for him. He had done his best for him last night, brought out his hard learned tricks, shocked him with it. He could do it again. Even as the automatic impulse towards self control rises he dismisses it, does so with pleasure. What's the point of self control now? Wasn't it all to avoid this, and what is this but absolute fucking joy? The stupidity of all his months of denial floors him. For what purpose was he withholding from himself everything he needed, some corrective substances, that's all, and John, in his entirety. 

Almost dizzy from this realisation he rolls to his side and takes John, pulls him on top of him, cradles his face with one hand as he looks up at him. John's eyes lid, wonderfully; he's always been so entirely expressive, open to him. He is someone who cries out to be pleased, someone who should be beside himself with as much pleasure as he would want, and instead with Sherlock he's been only denied. How wasted he's been on him. Sherlock aches with the thought of it, his hands moving over his chest, his slim waist. John sighs softly and settles closer, exposing his neck to Sherlock as he kisses it, his body going pliant under his hands. 

"How much have you had to drink?" John murmurs, laughing softly. 

"More than you want to know about…" Sherlock says into his skin. He takes hold of his hair, feeling John shiver as he pulls his head close to speak against his ear. "You're the most lovely thing I've ever seen."

John pulls back slightly, his eyes searching Sherlock's face. "I'm worried you're not okay, Sherlock."

"I'm definitely not," Sherlock says, spreading his hands at the small of John's back, forcing him to arch a little into him. The words feel true, but of so little consequence as to be barely worth speaking of. "If I tell you I'm a mess, is that better for you?"

"No," John says firmly. "You're not yourself…" 

Sherlock watches John's mouth form the words. "How could I be anything else?"

"I suppose I'd feel better if you spoke about it. Than this. Drinking, avoidance."

"Well, avoidance is textbook me," Sherlock jokes, vaguely proud of himself for coming up with something resembling conversation. "Does that set your mind at ease?"

John sighs and smoothes Sherlock's hair back, kisses his hairline, gently, too gently, gently in a way that makes Sherlock long to seek out his skin under his shirt. "I can be there for you, you know," he murmurs, his breath warm against his skin. "You don't have to disappear."

"Be here for me," Sherlock says quietly. "John, please."

It's not that he means to be calculating, but the way John's expression changes is immensely gratifying. John kisses him, softly, his hand slow and steady over his hair, his body melting sweetly along Sherlock's. 

Out of nowhere, Sherlock remembers that John's body is literally brittle, hollow, that too firm a touch will crack and cave it in. That his hands will tangle and tear the viscid, hair-fine web of his veins suspended inside. The thought suddenly renders him immobile, his hands hovering an inch above his skin. _You're being stupid_ , he reminds himself dimly, but the knowledge doesn't take. He feels himself starting to panic at the imagined sensation of John's hair shattering like tiny splinters of glass under his hands, the drug filling in the gaps of his own better sense enough to make his heart race. He wants urgently to dislodge him, move him away, but the image of damaging him by doing so, his surface thin and inelastic as the varnish on the bar back at the pub, is appalling. He turns his head away, breath coming uneven. It'll pass, he tells himself, focussing on the reality of John's hand at his hair, the weight of his body that remains solid, substantial, real. 

He hears John saying his name, and nods vaguely, aware he can't let on, can't let him see. When John moves away he slides off the bed in a kind of daze, absurd relief flooding him. He goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face, leans on the edge of the sink as he steadies his breath. Is there anything about his face that will give him away? He stares at himself, an expanse of pallor, eyes looking like nothing more than holes left from fingers pressed into wet clay. He shakes his head, rakes his hands through his hair, attempting to will himself back to the soft cloud of the high, but something has left him. He's alone now with nothing but the drain of ebbing adrenaline, and the knowledge that he can never write again.


	16. Chapter 16

John resettles his book-heavy satchel on his shoulder as he pulls the front door closed, blinking still blearily out into the sharp gold of the morning's light. It's bright, in a faintly hazy, faintly crystalline way, so that it takes a moment to recognise the backlit figure in a slightly frumpy coat crossing the road towards him as Lestrade. He nods a hello at him, not sure if this is a visit or a coincidence.

"Sherlock's already on his way over," he tells him, locking the front door and slipping his keys into his pocket. "He's probably at the scene now." 

Lestrade walks quickly over and shaking John's hand perfunctorily, as though by instinct. John raises his eyebrows. 

"I was hoping to talk to you, actually."

John hitches his bag again and starts to walk, Lestrade falling into step with him. "I'm not working with him today." 

"You haven't been, recently, I've noticed," Lestrade says, something in his tone John can't place. "Working with him."

"I haven't stopped, if that's what you mean," John says. "I have my own work, too."

"Do you have time for a coffee?"

John glances at his watch, then up at Lestrade. "What's this about?"

Lestrade brushes him off, indicating a coffee shop further down the street with an air of authority forceful enough for John to give up and follow him. A coffee isn't entirely unwanted, and although the library is calling his name, an excuse to ignore that call isn't either. As they walk he thinks of what he has to do today, untangling a section of his thesis that feels only a nudge away from collapsing in on itself completely, his arguments lost in their own circuitousness. He could cut it out entirely, treat it like the cancer it feels like, but it's too important as a bridging section to abandon entirely. He sighs, earning a curious glance from Lestrade.

They order and sit by the window, the coffee shop welcome for its street-insulated calm. John had been plied with too much alcohol last night, and still feels every glass. Once again Sherlock easily outdrank him, then that morning left John again to suffer, head under the pillow, while he sprang from bed and left the house with barely a word. It's becoming a regular thing, now that Sherlock's evenings aren't spent writing but coaxing John to him. He'd be worried about the drinking, if Sherlock were not so incredibly functional during the day, more so than usual-- busy, clever, but often absent. It's as though the energy he poured into his writing was rerouted into his detective work, a forked stream that had merged into a river.

John ignores his coffee, looks at Lestrade expectantly. It's not as though they don't get along, in fact John likes him considerably. He could easily see them as friends, if Lestrade was ever one for social calls. 

"I wanted to ask you about Sherlock," Lestrade says. He seems to realise John needs more of an explanation, so he presses on. "I know that you work together, but you also live together…" He trails off, steadying his gaze.

"Yes."

"By that I mean you're close," Lestrade says slowly.

"Yes," John says again, amused. 

"By that I mean--"

John puts him out of his misery. "Are you asking if we're a couple, Inspector?"

Lestrade gives John a withering look, then shakes his head. "Never mind. I wanted a second opinion. About his behaviour, from someone who sees him outside of work."

"What about it?" John takes a sip of coffee, which is mercifully strong and hot.

"Have you noticed any changes?"

"Well, he's not writing, I suppose you've heard about that. I think he'll come around. He is taking more cases?" Too many for John to keep up with. He misses it more than he thought he would, but Sherlock let him go strangely easily, stopped asking him, stopped expecting him. He glances out the window, frowning slightly thinking of it. 

When he looks back he sees that Lestrade looks vaguely displeased, stirring sugar into his black coffee. He's silent for a long moment, as though formulating a reply. "Any erratic behaviour?" he asks finally, his conversational tone betraying itself with its careful modulation. John feels a prickle of suspicion in him grow in intensity, feels the need to carefully consider his answer.

Erratic is not out of line for Sherlock, not at all. If anything he seems less so, quieter at home, stiller. A person who can watch a movie without being distracted ten times, although the alcohol could contribute to that. A person who seems to intensely want his attention, or maybe to feel one part of a whole. It's possibly depression. John should be talking to him about it, he knows.

"If anything he's been relatively subdued. I haven't been out working with him much the last few weeks. He hasn't asked me, to be honest."

Lestrade nods slowly. He starts to speak, but John goes on: "Has he been acting erratically?"

Surely an inspector's job is to gather information rather than reveal it, and even now, not on the job, John can see his conflict, as though an instinctive reflex. 

"Sherlock has always been excitable."

"He has," John agrees.

"And he's easily frustrated, irritable."

"Yes."

"I've noticed that he's been acting more so recently, and less predictably."

John picks up his coffee to disguise how he chews this over. If Lestrade is coming to him with it, he must be phrasing the issue diplomatically; it must be worse than what he's telling him. And yet, he can't help but be irritated. Sherlock's brilliance doesn't come without rough edges. He's not a professional, nor a piece of machinery that can be deployed at will. He suffers, and if that suffering makes him behave unpredictably, so be it. If his frustration, loss, whatever mysterious blend of emotion Sherlock is feeling is presenting by exaggerating his normal faults, it shouldn't be a surprise.

"He's going through some things, Greg," John says after a long moment. "Have you spoken to him about it?"

"He doesn't think there is a problem."

"Is there?"

Lestrade looks out the window. "He's come very close to interfering with evidence, been extraordinarily inappropriate with witnesses, there's been some outbursts-- serious outbursts."

John feels oddly relieved. "That sounds like a normal day."

"On a normal day, he at least knows where the line is. Even as he runs right over it, he knows that he's done it. At the moment, the last few weeks… I'm not sure if he's aware a line exists."

John nods. "Maybe he should take some time off," he says, then smiles at Lestrade's skeptical look. If Sherlock were one to sleepwalk, he would probably wake to find himself at a crime scene, especially at the moment. 

A silence draws out between them, Lestrade stirring his coffee with exaggerated concentration. John recognises this as a technique, Lestrade hoping he will fill the pause with more information, but he's not sure that he'd want to hear any of it. From John's perspective, everything Lestrade has said makes sense. Of course Sherlock in his current state would be on edge at work, and then come home wanting John to calm him, without his writing to do so. And besides, doesn't John normally go with him to help modulate some of that bad behaviour? Wouldn't his very absence neatly explain it away? 

"Sherlock has a history with drug use," Lestrade says, finally, a tone of frustration entering his voice. John looks up at him, the previous irritation blooming now into anger. 

"For god's sake."

"John, it's my job. When an addict in recovery shows a sudden behavioural changes--"

"He's not using."

"Isolating oneself from loved ones is a classic sign."

John laughs. "Trust me, he's not isolating himself from me."

"For as long as I've known you two, you've worked together as a team. Even a month or so ago when you were overseas he seemed lost without you. But then, suddenly, he suffers a personal crisis, and not only are you nowhere to be seen, but he's entirely unconcerned about it... in fact seems to be actively keeping you away. And in this absence, John, his behaviour has become legitimately concerning. I'm not the only one who thinks so, by the way--"

"Don't tell me, Donovan's noticed too," John mutters, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Do you understand what I'm saying? He may not be using around you."

John drains the rest of his coffee, picks up the strap of his bag.

"John--"

"What do you want me to say, Greg? You asked me if he's okay, he seems okay to me." He pauses, sighs. "I appreciate that you're concerned, if you really are concerned for him, and not just… I don't know."

"I am concerned for him, but I'm also reassured by your confidence in him, John. I just haven't seen you. I had no idea if something had happened between you, as well, if this was a larger thing in his personal life as well. You can understand how it looked to me."

John nods; it's not unreasonable. "What do you want me to do? Talk to him?"

Lestrade seems to know that John won't respond well before he speaks it, his tone careful. "Keep an eye on him."

"Get him a drug test if you're worried, you won't be the first," John says sharply, leaning forward. "I live with him, I know him." More comes to mind, but John doesn't say it. 

Lestrade gives a belated nod, of acceptance or resignation John isn't quite sure. He finishes his coffee and stands, offering his hand again as John follows.

"I think highly of you two, I hope you know that," Lestrade says, slightly subdued. "I hope I'm not out of line."

"You're concerned, it's alright. I'm protective of him, so I understand concern. I'll..." The words are hard to force out, the memory his strange car ride with Mycroft suddenly coming to mind. "I'll keep my eyes open." 

 

* * *

 

It takes time to find Sherlock, looming in a dim circular booth towards the back of the pub, but when he does he's almost startled to find his eyes fixed on him, as though he was watching him search. Was he doing more than watching? Observing? Or just looking, the way John finds himself doing at times, that strange pleasure of seeing him as if a stranger. 

He nods hello, points to Sherlock's drink, then the bar, gets a brief shake of his head as his answer. The setting sun cuts through the street facing windows, reacts with the relative gloom of the bar to render the clientele in a kind of chiaroscuro. John orders a pint, another whiskey for Sherlock for good measure, and weaves over to him.

"Hello," he murmurs, more softly than the bar allows for, dropping his bag with a small sigh of relief and sliding into the booth. Sherlock opens an arm silently, giving him an approving smile as he moves the bag from between them and tucks himself close. "Hello," he says again, at a normal volume.

Sherlock leans to kiss him, then just as quickly breaks away, takes John's beer from him and drinks. "Hi."

"Let me die, I swear, I need glasses, I can't read another word..." John sighs, taking the glass from Sherlock to take a long sip, then passing it back. "How was your day?"

"Uneventful," Sherlock says in a way that John knows means eventful, but not of immediate interest. John gives him a knowing smile, watching him drink. "Lestrade says hello."

"Hi, Lestrade," John says as he picks up Sherlock's whiskey, trying to keep his tone neutral. Has Sherlock intuited their meeting the week before? He's been unable to keep smaller things from him, surprise presents, irritations he hasn't thought worth it to bring up. Then again, Sherlock is hardly one for modesty or restraint. If he had something on him, it would be rare for Sherlock to not immediately wave it in his face. Besides, he still definitely doesn't know about the similar meeting with his brother, months abo.

Sherlock leans suddenly close, stilling John's hand, taking the glass of whiskey and setting it gently down. 

"Say hello to me, properly."

"What's a proper hello?" John asks, smiling as Sherlock lowers his head close, his eyes dark, from the low light or from something else, John isn't sure.

"Is this why you've hidden yourself back here?" he asks quietly, straightening up to speak close to his ear. He looks past Sherlock to check their surroundings, never entirely comfortable with public displays of affection. He's calmed slightly by their relative privacy, the walls of the booth and their position shadowing them enough for him to allow Sherlock to guide his attention back with a touch to his cheek. 

"Nobody minds here," Sherlock murmurs, something in the _here_ significant. John raises an eyebrow, looks away again to realise he can't make out a single woman in the pub.

"Is this a gay bar you've asked me to?" John asks, returning his gaze when Sherlock coaxes it back again.

"I suppose you'd prefer a bisexual bar," Sherlock says dryly, amused and something else, searching, maybe. He brushes the back of his fingers along John's cheek, his jaw, tipping his head up as he goes. 

"Don't keep saying things like that," John says, feeling his eyes lid despite himself. 

"The B-word?" Sherlock asks, sweetly, showing John the flash of a grin.

"You bring it up like it's a thing for me. There's nothing... there's no half-measures about how I feel about you. It doesn't work like that."

This seems to please Sherlock. He falls silent for a moment, his eyes steady on him, then drops his fingers to John's shirt buttons, undoing two with sudden dexterity. 

"Sherlock…" 

Sherlock shushes him, brushing the material gently away from John's shoulder. He traces the reddened mark made by John's overloaded bag digging into his skin, then lowers his head to brush his lips there. He shouldn't be surprised that Sherlock knew he was bruising there, but the thought thrills him slightly anyway, the idea of Sherlock being quietly aware his body under his clothes. John swallows, his hand dropping to Sherlock's thigh, his resistance seeming to melt the more he warms at his touch. 

"You mark very easily," Sherlock murmurs, catching John's eyes as his fingertips trace the sensitised skin there. He watches his reaction for a long moment before pressing down, the unsatisfying ache, the deliberate implication of it, making John's breath catch.

"Do…" John starts, lowering his head as Sherlock covers his shoulder again, adjusts the material slowly enough to almost draw a protest. "Do you like that?"

"John," Sherlock says softly, bowed close, redoing John's buttons. "I like that."

John glances up, the breath that comes after meeting his eyes harder than the one that came before. 

"I had a drink before you got here."

"No kidding," John smiles, gathering himself, spreading his fingers where they lay at Sherlock's thigh. "That's okay…"

Sherlock gives John a ghost of a smile, something heavy about him, slow. John hates the faint swell of suspicion, the way he finds himself studying his expression, even as Sherlock's fingers skim to his hair, caress the back of his head. His first glass of whiskey sits next to the one John brought him, untouched, ice cubes melted entirely. He didn't taste at all of alcohol when he kissed him.

He pushes the thought out of his mind with a sudden feeling of urgency, settles his head on his shoulder.

"Can I ask you something?" he finds himself saying, closing his eyes at the slow draw of Sherlock's fingers through his hair.

"Mm..."

"The person who leaked your name. Why aren't you trying to find them?"

Sherlock's fingers still, as does his breath, just for a second. 

"I know who it was."

John sits up in surprise, resisting as Sherlock attempts to tighten his arm around him, draw him back. He raises his eyebrows expectantly. 

"I don't want to talk about it, John, it's not important..." Sherlock's calm, what John sees now as his facade, seems to slip, something in his tone tired, almost vulnerable. "It was an entirely worthless person. Barely a person. A walking chaos machine, and I won't get involved, because he can't land a blow and then get what he wants as a reward for doing so."

John nods, his brows knitted, his body tense. "What he wants?"

"My attention," Sherlock says tersely, picking up the warm whiskey glass and throwing it back. "Please. Not now."

"Alright," John says, touching Sherlock's arm gently, taking the empty glass from him. He thinks he can fill in the gaps, somewhat. "I'm sorry."

Sherlock looks at John, or possibly through him. For the first time John notices his pallor, the faint sheen of sweat near his hairline. "Are you feeling alright? Physically?"

"Actually..." Sherlock shakes his head quickly, raking both hands through his hair. "I could use a walk."

"Sure," John says, pulling his bag over to him.

"Alone."

John doesn't bother to hide his frown. 

"I won't be long. I'll see you at home."

"You know, I'm sorry if I--"

"It's fine." Sherlock seems to spring out from his seat, picking up his coat. "I really won't be long."

 

* * *

 

Sherlock pushes out into the street in a kind of panic. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket, his hand slightly unsteady, as though he's shivering from a chill he can only barely feel. It's the hash that made him feel too close to being caught, probably, or something else, anxiety from a comedown off something or-- he can barely remember what he was on today. He had aimed for relaxed before meeting John, but ended up somewhere in fucked up, his thoughts coming alternately too slow and too fast.

He can't ignore John's repeated glances at his whiskey, his pathetic prop, an attempt to ease his mind about his drinking. It's hardly an act he's proud of, but his John grows cleverer and cleverer, and he can't afford him looking under too many stones. 

He buys eye drops at a Boots he passes, then walks to restock, dropping into his reassembled network one by one. He visits his jovial Serbian, who still doesn't seem to know he's two weeks away a rehab stint. He meets his strung out university student, a genius with prescriptions but a fool in love, and then his high turnover, park-dwelling idiots. Calmed somewhat by the presence of a pocketful of corrective substances, then by a bump, then by a few serious hits from his dreadlocked Australian's volcano vaporiser, he flags down a cab to take him home.

As the car slowly glides through congested streets he reminds himself that this kind of thing can't happen. He can't drop everything and flee when his thoughts grow wild, and especially, definitely, never, do so in front of John. Lestrade suspects him already, he had been too arrogant, too careless, letting himself build up and explode. His tolerance still isn't what it was, it was foolish to expect his rhythms to be the same. He does have new complications, too, in the need for stealth at all times, no down time to nurse a comedown, no space to get blissfully incapacitated. In the past he had corrections for work, for writing, for sleep. Now he needs an additional one, for John. 

Yes, his fall off the wagon was inelegant, desperate, but if he's careful, he still has time to stick the landing. Financially, it pays for itself, now that he has the potential to operate at full capacity, his energy, focus, yes, his brilliance back in force. Without the writing, he has time to devote to cases, accepting any phone call, any walk in, any request from Scotland Yard without reservation. He solves cases on the way to other cases. He works so hard that John has been increasingly forced to bow out, but that too is manageable, if not also a little encouraged. Even John's absence can be compensated for with a slight chemical alteration: add tolerance, subtract irritability. No one hires Sherlock for his social graces, after all.

Sherlock thinks himself pre-relapse like an aquatic animal, lulled at the ocean floor, stagnant and oppressed by the weight of the water. He's rediscovered his own motor muscles, now, can make snap adjustments, course corrections, navigate the currents in all directions with the grace and the knife-sharp agility he needs. 

In rehab there was an inanity that had for some reason stuck with him. Every time you go into recovery, you get better at it going into recovery. In Sherlock's case, every time he relapses, he gets better at it.

So if he will be selfish, then he will learn to be selfish perfectly. If he is hurting himself, he'll do it like a surgeon. 

The house is slightly cleaner when Sherlock returns, bread on the kitchen bench, milk in the fridge. Sherlock can read John's moods by his housework as much as anything else, can almost see him swiping away at the floor with a broom, slamming the garbage lid closed downstairs. He hesitates to call to him, but does, receives no answer. It's possibly for the best.

He hides his purchases in the usual spot, inside a boxed shoe a little too high, a little too far back in his wardrobe for John to comfortably reach. It would be a double slap for poor John if he discovered that particular line of thinking. 

As he leaves the room he pauses at is mirror and carefully checks his appearance. He's reminded of when exactly he started being meticulous about it, in university, around the time his drug use grew heavy enough to need to seriously hide. His interest in his own appearance, truthfully, is middling at best, although his taste in clothing has always run to the expensive. But when concealing one's disarray, it's somehow easier to be exacting, if unadventurous, rather than to merely try one's best. No matter how far gone, the shoes will be always polished, the collar always adjusted. Anything less is a slippery slope.

He takes a shot of vodka in the kitchen, then, after a pause, another. Finally he pours a third for himself and one for John, and carries the two glasses upstairs to his room. 

John lies on his bed with a book open on his chest, opening one eye in mock-suspicion at him as he knocks. 

"You're quiet, I didn't hear you." It's clearly not true, but an effort at diplomacy, so Sherlock lets it go. Sherlock leaves the glass on the table by the bed, and crosses the room to sit on his desk.

"Feeling better?" John asks, sitting up and eyeing the glass.

"Sorry for leaving you."

"No…" John shakes his head. "Sorry for bringing it up."

Sherlock doesn't immediately remember what had set him off earlier. When he does, it's with a small rise of disgust. James. He tosses his head dismissively, as if to throw it from is very mind, pushes his hair back. "My fault. What are you reading?"

John shows him the cover, then looks at it himself, frowning. "Conceptions of mental illness in the late…" He gives a deep sigh, pushing the book to the floor. "Late middle ages. I'm in no state to read German tonight. English is bad enough."

"You're doing well," Sherlock says gently, giving him a small smile. His eyes are darkly circled, his colour not its best. It's Sherlock's fault, a lot of the exhaustion. He had never been more in need of him, more grateful for him in the first weeks of the news breaking, a buffer from the unrelenting ribbing on cases, the seemingly endless calls. John had been the one who unwaveringly reminded him that it would pass, he had sat up with him had at night, watching movies, drinking, filling the void that writing had occupied. He had handled the outside world like a kind of traffic controller for him, letting in only what he could manage, a shield and a harbour. But he shouldn't have had to, and he's behind on his work and suffering for it now, while Sherlock himself has floated away in his escape pod.

"You could have brought me coffee."

Sherlock nods, distracted by a black, hardcover notebook he finds on the desk. A small set of photographs slip out as he opens it; a beach, a cooking fish, John's face in profile, leaning forward as he tends to a fire. Sherlock took that of him at the beach house, he remembers with a start. Remembers in a rush the absolute sense of misery, of hopeless adoration he felt as he held the camera. He can't move to the next one, can't take his eyes away. Had anything seemed more searingly lovely than he did to him in that moment? 

The thought is sickening, the way dread always is when it rushes you from behind. He fools himself into thinking that his hold on him is secure, that his own devotion must be matched in John, because the thought otherwise is unbearable. But he will leave over this. Even if he sticks it out through one inevitable attempt at recovery, maybe two, once he realises that he's fundamentally like this, that the person he thinks he loves was merely a temporary fabrication, he'll go. 

He quickly looks through the rest, this strange modified record, no trace of anyone but Sherlock and John to be found. The sweetness of that, too, makes him ache in a kind of anticipation of future grief. He replaces the photographs and goes to the bed where John watches him, takes his face in his hands to kiss him.

"Hadn't you seen those?" John asks him softly, drawing his body over his as he lies back. "Feels like a long time ago…"

"Not to me." Sherlock folds himself over him, stroking his hair back with both hands. 

"Makes me feel like we had a holiday together," John smiles, tracing the buttons of Sherlock's shirt, almost a question. 

"Will you go on one with me?"

John murmurs assent as he lifts up to kiss him. "Where?"

"Somewhere you are," Sherlock finds himself saying with an embarrassing earnestness. John smiles, his eyes softening slightly, his hands slowing as they move along his body. John is easy, so easy with him, responding with almost a sympathetic response to his own sudden desire. How easy it becomes for him, too, to remember to want, to not shy away. 

John seems to sense his urgency, and the specifics of it, treating him with his kind of thorough kindness that seems to say something more about his character, his being in general. He unbuttons him, lets himself be stripped down. He murmurs what Sherlock likes to hear with increasing heat as he takes him in hand, gently closing his field of view down to just him, his voice, his skin, his scent. It's all Sherlock can do but feel him, lay himself entirely at his mercy until he fills to overflowing.

After, he holds John close, silent and stupid as his body collects itself from its disarray. John kisses him, smooths his hair, draws his body alongside his. They're quiet a long time, John's hand slowly finding a path over him, lulling him.

"Listen…" John says quietly into the silence, his fingers drifting along Sherlock's chest, his stomach. "I should tell you something. Don't be angry, alright?"

"No promises," Sherlock murmurs. He closes his eyes, pulling John's body closer, presses a kiss to his shoulder. 

John laughs slightly, sounding almost nervous. "Lestrade came and saw me last week…"

"For fuck's sake…" 

"I know," John murmurs. "He was concerned about you. About your… I don't know, your temperament? He spoke to you too, didn't he?"

"He said something."

"I told him you were fine. I don't know why I didn't tell you before now, I didn't want to upset you. I just… he asked if you'd relapsed."

"It seems almost impossible someone can be as stupid as him and employed," Sherlock mutters, his heart in his throat, his breath difficult to steady. 

John laughs, spreading his fingers at Sherlock's hip. "I'm sorry, I should have told you sooner. I think I calmed him down, anyway."

Sherlock forces what he hopes looks like a bemused smile, presses a kiss to John's forehead, then his lips. "Do you want to eat?"

John nods, but doesn't move away, studying Sherlock's face in a way that makes the panic rise again. He smiles as Sherlock touches his hair, brushing it gently away from his forehead, but doesn't look away. More is coming, Sherlock can sense what will happen next, a gentle question, a deepening look of concern. He can't do it, lie outright, not right now, not with this sickening combination of love and loss running through him. He sits up, buttoning his shirt, turning away to hide how clumsily he manages it. 

"I'll go get something. Indian?"

"Sure," John says easily. When Sherlock looks back he's pulling on his sweater, combing both hands through his hair, as though rearranging everything Sherlock had put out of place. "Something with meat."

"That's not very specific."

John smiles and leans forward, hooking an arm around Sherlock's neck to kiss his cheek. "I trust you," he murmurs, the look he gives him as he pulls away somehow significant.

As Sherlock shrugs his coat on and heads out into the street the desire to not return, to not be slugged that unearned faith in him, to not be present for his own misery, seizes him forcefully. He walks faster, the night air seeming to strip away everything but the strange, almost painful armature of chemical imbalances. It's a familiar feeling, like every drug works through him as though water through a rock system, draining out to reveal increasingly larger caverns that ache to be filled again. That, in fact, must be filled for his structural integrity.

He knows where to go, feels drawn there as though by some invisible force. But first, he goes some streets down and orders food for John, delivery. He takes out his phone, sends him three messages in quick succession. 

_I'm sorry. A case has come up, don't wait up for me._

_They're going to deliver. I ordered "unspecific meat", that's what you wanted, wasn't it?_

_I love you, sleep well._


	17. Chapter 17

John wakes to the sound of a glass shattering in the kitchen. It takes him a moment to untangle the sound from the dream he was having, a strange one. It drains quickly away from him, leaving only a residue of anxiety, with no lingering details to attach the feeling to.

He knows the sound is only Sherlock, who has been coming home later for weeks, but some instinctive impulse compels him from his bed into the cold of the bedroom, and then to the kitchen. 

Sherlock is at the kitchen sink, a large, broken piece of drinking glass in one hand as he looks over at him. The faint night-time sounds of the city, cars passing outside one at a time, are loud enough as to hear their full passage through the silence. As a child, these same sounds would fascinate him as he lay awake, a tiny insomniac, imagining the mysterious journeys being made by adults through the deep night. 

John folds his arms and leans against the door frame. "Do you need a hand?"

Sherlock shakes his head silently. The glass winks briefly in the moonlight as Sherlock drops it into the bin. His long coat faintly glistens with the same crystalline gleam. It's wet outside, it's raining, John slowly realises. 

"Are you coming to bed, or is this just a stopover?" John asks. Sleep-clouded, the way Sherlock turns to look at him feels faintly feline. A big cat, a panther. "Where have you been?"

"A case," Sherlock says tersely, his tone unapologetic. "A hotel, in--"

"Alright, we're in the midst of London's greatest crime spree," John interrupts, pushing away from the wall. 

Sherlock cocks his head, his expression unchanging, his eyes catching no light in the dark. It comes to him without warning, that thing he can't touch. He feels it finally settle inside him and make a home. 

He's not sure why he lets Sherlock come to him, move him back against the wall, hand cradling the back of his head. He touches Sherlock's shoulder, surprised at how it feels to know, or perhaps to accept the knowledge. What he thought would be anger is instead a sadness, one that after only a few moments feels impossible not to somehow attempt to shake off, like a spider climbing his skin. 

It's a strange feeling to want comfort from the person who has discomforted you, but still John seeks it, accepts Sherlock's kiss as though he been waiting, hungry for it, takes fistfuls of hair as he presses into his touch. Sherlock makes a soft sound, a kind of ragged breath, as he rakes his hands along John's body, then presses with heat back into the kiss. He finds himself breathing a thoughtless kind of _yes_ against Sherlock's lips as he is gripped, painfully, at his hips, Sherlock's fingers digging through the thin material of his shirt into sensitive flesh. He stretches into it, going pliable where Sherlock is unyielding, pressed hard between his body and the cold wall behind him. 

Something builds in him in tandem with the desire to let go, the idea that this is wrong, that he is being wronged, swelling with greater and greater force. That suspicion that Sherlock is plying him what he wants, tossing it to him like a bone for a guard dog, makes him almost sick with sudden anger. He wrenches away and pushes him, hard enough to hurt, then again, watching the strange blankness in Sherlock's expression with a kind of crumbling feeling. 

"John…" 

John takes a breath, raking his hands through his hair, shrugging Sherlock away as he touches him. 

"What are you on right now?" he asks, feels the words vibrating in the air, as though the time it took him to say them has lent them a physicality. 

Sherlock looks away sharply, shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I had a drink."

"How is it so _fucking_ easy for you to lie to me?"

Sherlock looks at him with what looks like a practiced innocence, an air of confusion too perfect to be real. John has to breathe to calm himself, feels his hands clenching, his heart racing hard enough to come loose. 

"John," Sherlock says, reaching for him slowly, like you might a startled animal. "John, sweetheart…"

"Lestrade knew," John says slowly. "But you make me stupid, and you _knew_ that."

"No," Sherlock says roughly, rubbing his forehead as if to clear it. "John, no."

"Weren't you just about to fuck me so I wouldn't look too hard at you?" John asks, his voice rising in volume, and instability. 

" _No,_ " Sherlock says, taking John's arm roughly. "John."

"How long?"

Sherlock looks away, his jaw tightening, dropping his hand. John half expects him to charge away, as is his nature. Instead he turns his back to him, as though collecting himself. It takes him a long time to speak.

"Please," he says, turning back. "John. I can't tonight. I will, but I can't tonight."

"Too fucking bad." 

"Please," Sherlock says again, steadily advancing on him until John's back is against the bench. He touches John's jaw, his cheek, until he's pushed away again. "I haven't slept. I'm coming down–" The indirect acknowledgement stops John's breath in his throat. "Please. In the morning..."

John feels the fight leave him, somehow struck dumb by the reality of it. A kind of panic, _what are you supposed to do_ , fights with his fury, at Sherlock and at himself. He closes his eyes as Sherlock strokes his hair.

"Fine." John wouldn't know what to do tonight, anyway. Shout? Chain him to the radiator until he promises to stop? He needs to think. 

He goes to pick his coat up from where he left it, draped on the back of the arm chair.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock asks, sounding properly unsettled for the first time. 

"Fuck you. Go sleep it off, like you asked."

"Where are you going?"

"Harry's."

"John, please."

"What, do you need me here to give you a hug to help you sleep, too? Some warm milk? That's what I'm here for, right? To comfort you?" John is half shouting the words behind him as he crashes down the stairs, thinking too late of a sleeping Mrs Hudson.

" _John._ "

As soon as he is in the taxi he checks his coat pockets with sudden concern. He's in public in his sleep clothes, but at least he has his phone and wallet. 

The rain is falling so hard that he feels half drowned by the time he makes it to his sister's door. She answers in a sleeveless nightgown that falls nearly to her ankles, her hair in a long plait over her shoulder.

"Don't fucking tell me."

"I'm so sorry," John says in a kind of whisper, as though he hasn't already woken her, following her inside. "I just need to sleep here tonight."

"What has he done?"

Her living room is dark and smells, as always, disconcertingly similar to their childhood home. If there was anyone he could ask about what to do, it's her, but somehow Sherlock's failure feels like it's his own, and he can't quite find the words to confess with. 

"Relapse," is the best he can do, shrugging off his wet coat and hanging it by the door, then turns back to her in a silent entreaty, _please don't savage him_. To his surprise she merely purses her lips, cocks her head.

"It's a bitch," she says, vaguely, and disappears to return with a blanket and a pillow.

John wills himself to sleep on the couch, and wakes what seems like only minutes later to the smell of coffee and of something sweet cooking. His first thought is of Sherlock, a kind of regret for how he reacted, and before he wakes up enough to think the better of it he sends him a message.

_I'll be home soon. We'll talk. OK?_

He doesn't have it in him to apologise, but placated by drowsiness he feels a kind of benevolence that subsumes the anger. Didn't Sherlock's weakness come after months upon months of strength? It's not that he's never contemplated this very situation, and how he imagined he would react. He shouldn't be surprised that hypothetical self did better.

He drags himself to the kitchen bench to watch his sister cook, running his hands through his hair. 

"How are you feeling?" Harry asks, pouring him a coffee so full it spills over, forcing John to lean down to sip before it can be picked up. 

"Can you tell me how to feel?"

"Single," Harry jokes, turning around to cock an eyebrow at him. "What did he do?"

"Lying, worse, I think," John shrugs, slouching a little in his stool. He can't bear to trawl his memories for specifics just yet. "I think it's been going on a while, is all. He's been really deceptive, and I've been… blind."

"You probably should talk to Clara about this, not me," Harry says, with a lightness John sees through. He frowns behind her back. "I wish I didn't understand him. And if you've thought I was being excessive about warning you, it's because I knew what you were signing yourself up for. Too well, John."

"He hasn't…" _Hurt me_ , is what he wants to say, but he can't quite manage the words. He feels as though there is a wound he doesn't want to confirm the severity of by looking at. He still doesn't know the extent of the situation, nor the duration. 

They eat what John assumes were intended as pancakes, almost grotesquely misshapen but hot, and sweet, which is enough. Between almost frantic mouthfuls Harry gives him a running commentary on her work, her newly-pregnant friend, a TV show she is heavily invested in him also watching. She's good at that, when she wants to be, reading a room, knowing when to be a big sister, and although his eyes drift again and again to his ever-silent phone, he feels the tension ease. There's nothing that can't be worked out.

He tries to call Sherlock as Harry drives him home, but feels somehow too self-conscious to leave him a voicemail in her presence. The house when he returns is empty, with not even Mrs Hudson downstairs to distract him. There's still glass in the sink from where Sherlock had broken it the night before. With a ripple of irritation he cleans it, then the rest of the house, building to a kind of ferocity and lack of regard for Sherlock's intricately chaotic organisational systems that it begins to feel cathartic. 

Still no response, after a pride-damaging number of calls and messages. Lestrade, infuriatingly, informs him that he hasn't seen Sherlock for over a week. It strikes him that he must have friends, of a sort, people he spends time with when he has been telling John he's on a case. People he buys from, at the bare minimum. He doesn't know the name of a single person, let alone how to contact them if he did.

He knows he would be doing with Sherlock in this situation. He knows at least some of his haunts, and with a sense of resolution he goes systematically to as many as he can to ask after him, irritation driving him from Tube station to Tube station until he's too exhausted to continue. No one has seen him, or cares to tell him they have. The rain as he walks is barely a drizzle, but cold, maddening, the sky feeling low and pregnant.

By the time he returns home at dusk he's out of options, his phone battery and his energy flagging. He can do nothing but wait for him, a situation he finds almost unbearably irritating. He's actively hiding from him, he realises, with a rush of anger that propels to call him yet again. As he unconsciously counts the fourteen rings before Sherlock's terse _Leave a message_ can interrupt, he realises he hasn't eaten since the attempted pancakes. He hangs up and orders delivery, half of which he feeds listlessly to the cat as he watches a Hitchcock marathon on the TV. Mid- _Vertigo_ , he falls asleep where he sits.

He's left with no option but the nuclear one, he realises as he wakes to an empty house, the sound of Mrs Hudson's kettle whistling downstairs his only comfort. He works out the aches from sleeping on the couch in the shower, dresses, and steels himself. 

The business card in his wallet looks as pristine as when he received it many months ago, as if it were somehow enchanted. He turns it over in his hands. The stock is heavy, textural, the lettering perfect in a way that speaks less of pedantry than an unspoken authority. There is nothing on it but _M. Holmes_ , and three numbers, two with country codes John doesn't recognise.

Even looking at it makes him feel as though something irreversible has taken place, a feeling that creeps over him, and then just as suddenly wears off with a jolt. He finds himself almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it, that he had bought into their feud to such an extent. He's calling his missing boyfriend's brother, nothing more.

As the phone rings he watches the cat stalk something too small for him to see, never going through with the definitive pounce, just following, letting its presence be known. 

"Holmes." It's strange how the memory of a voice stays with you with such fidelity. John feels an impulse to hang up at the sound of it.

"Mycroft, hi," John says, wondering if Mycroft remembers his, too. "It's John here… Watson, uh, Sherlock's John," he clarifies, rolling his eyes.

"A car is coming. Be waiting outside."

The line goes dead. John blinks at it, feeling a laugh rise in his throat again, but nevertheless finds himself doing as he's told. He closes the windows against the rain, puts on his shoes. 

The car that arrives looks similar to the one that he rode in months before, but there is no one behind the opaque windows but the driver, who takes him to what appears to be a one-percenter outpost on the outskirts of the city. They drive through almost comically large gates, down a driveway densely-lined with conifers, to a house that is somehow both staggeringly large and surprisingly modest. Ivy-draped, it brings to mind a boarding school in a children's book, an illusion that is shattered as he is released into the care of another, identically dressed member of staff. As the door opens, the interior of the house takes his breath. The modernity of the interior would almost be crass if it wasn't impeccably, breathtakingly done. John finds himself pausing on the threshold, somehow taken aback, the floor an almost endless expanse of gleaming black granite, light pouring in from skylights that vault impossibly high above them, as though the exterior was merely a shell to enclose this void. 

His chaperone leads him to a long, book-lined room where Mycroft waits. From the presence of a desk he takes it to be an office, the only real source of light a floor-to-ceiling window that frames a dense garden. It would seem at first glance overgrown, given away only by its perfection, a kind of sylvan ideal. 

He's not offered a seat. His own offered hand is refused.

"This really wasn't necessary, Mycroft." He briefly considers, given the surroundings, a _Mr Holmes_ , but he feels childish enough as it is. "He's only been gone a day."

"I thought," Mycroft starts, rising from his seat. "That I had been clear with you, John."

John flicks his eyes skyward, as though in a prayer for forbearance. "If you don't know where he is, then--"

"Tea?"

John pauses in surprise, then nods. Tea is requested by some kind of intercom, and is brought with almost supernatural speed by yet another staff member, looking faintly ridiculous with a bluetooth headset and a tea tray in hand. He pours precisely into two fine, double walled glasses, where it gleams as though by some internal energy, bright and clear as a gem. He thinks of Sherlock's black tea, so strong it almost has a thickness, thinks of him finding a mug the next day and finishing it cold. He smiles faintly, as though to stave against the ache.

Mycroft gestures for John to seat, but doesn't take his own again. Instead he paces, hands in pockets, his own cup ignored.

"I find it extremely frustrating to be ignored, John."

"So do I," John says cooly. "If you think I'm the cause of anything--"

"Sherlock is a creature that requires stability. Calm."

John laughs, reaching for the tea, its delicate bitterness, of course, perfect. And if it's poisoned, at least he'll be spared this. 

"Sherlock needs to be found, I think. That's what he _requires_."

"What do you get out of your relationship with Sherlock?"

John tilts his head in amusement. "I love him."

"What do you _get_." Mycroft almost spits the word, turning on his heel to face him directly.

What can he say that won't sound hopelessly naive echoing from these high walls? He takes another sip of tea as his way of declining an answer.

"Did you fight with him?"

"Yes."

"Did he take it well?"

"I don't know. I left."

"I don't think you properly appreciate how little a push Sherlock needs to run off the road."

"I know Sherlock very well," John says calmly. He watches a wave of anger pass over Mycroft's face, and it strikes him suddenly that he has no way of getting back to the city without his assistance.

"You must be aware, John, that Sherlock is fixated on you to an unhealthy level. I don't think you realise the consequences of this. This is a profoundly unstable person, looking to you to... stabilise him. Do you understand?"

"Not even slightly, Mycroft."

"You fought with him in the midst of a relapse, and left him to decide how best to proceed. Now, I'm not to tell you that this was incorrect. I understand your feelings better than you know. What I'm asking, is how do you think he dealt with his own feelings, John?"

John rises to his feet as if drawn up by something outside himself, his heart suddenly in his throat.

"Where is he?"

Mycroft smiles beatifically, drawing close. He lays one hand gently on his shoulder, as if to cage him in, his gaze paternal and sharp. "What Sherlock has done was not done maliciously. Not towards you, at least. But the effect remains the same. 

"John, my intent is to give you a gift. You should return home, you may feel all the anger you are entitled to, in the knowledge that Sherlock is safe, and is being cared for. You will be spared seeing him, you will be spared your suffering playing second string to his own--"

"Where the fuck is he, Mycroft?" John's ears ring with his own anger, his stomach turning.

"Are you listening to me, John? You'll see him in good time. But first, you must think about this. Sherlock has put himself before you. Sherlock has lied to you, deceived you, and now has left you. For his own sake you must feel that. For his own sake you must not be kind to him, or buckle under misplaced sympathy. This is something that has taken me over a decade to learn."

The spell of his words break as quickly as they had settled over him. He pushes Mycroft's shoulder from his arm and takes a hold of his shirt, his fists curling. Before he can raise one to him, he's caught from behind, his arms restrained beyond hope of release by the former tea carrier. 

"You should tell me where he is," he says, as calmly as he can, as he attempts fruitlessly to turn to face his apprehender. " _Let_ me go. This is mad."

"Go home, now, John," Mycroft says calmly, a smile flickering up to the surface. "Go home and think carefully."


	18. Chapter 18

"Have you finished with that?"

"Fairly certain you just saw me light it," Sherlock says around his cigarette, his eyes narrowing slightly. He knows her name, Marie, from seeing her in group. Kensington, two small dogs, yoga enthusiast. A habit for chewing ice. If there were a word for her it would be perky. Or Percocet.

Sherlock didn't realise there was a dejected way to fix a ponytail, but she manages it, blonde hair restored to that mysterious angle that communicates the message _I jog_. Too dull-edged to put up a fight, he holds up his packet of Camels with his good hand.

"Do you have enough?" she asks, as though the offer was made unprompted. The look in her eyes is faintly bird like, checking his expression, her fingers hovering over the packet.

"It's fine."

"Very kind of you." She sits next to him on the stone bench, crossing her legs. "Didn't know if you could speak."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow, sliding the packet into his the pocket of his standard issue, grossly oversized parka. Why this particular centre insists on what basically amounts to a uniform, albeit one expressly and bewilderingly stated to be _all organic_ , is beyond him. He feels as though a minor sense of perception has been lost, one less useful signifier of the snags and residue a person wears of their world– although perhaps it isn't so bad. It forces him to be sharper.

"I've seen you about," she says. Something about the word _seen_ is stressed. "You hardly say a word."

Sherlock nods slightly as he flicks his lighter open for her, shielding the flame with his cast.

"Not quite in the mood."

"Not in the mood for rehab?

Sherlock laughs shortly. "Are you?"

"Good question…" Marie says as she exhales, flicking ash. "Not in the mood to get divorced, if that means anything."

Sherlock nods wordlessly in response. The smoking area is located in a kind of grove, hemmed in tightly with spruces and conifers. The fallen needles crushed underfoot, and more nervously shredded by smokers, make the air around them smell strongly of Christmas. 

"What happened to your wrist?"

"Fell down some stairs."

"And the black eye?"

"The reason I fell down the stairs," Sherlock says, turning his injured hand idly to examine the cast as he speaks. 

Marie smiles as well, leaning with one arm against the back of the bench to face him. 

"Apparently. I don't remember well."

"No," Marie says, mock-scandalised.

Sherlock glances at her, almost surprised by how close she has slid to him. Her smile widens slightly, revealing perfect, oddy childlike teeth.

"I've wanted to talk to you, you know, I watched you in group. You don't say anything, but you're very… alert. It's interesting." She takes an inexpert drag of her cigarette, then carefully taps ash to the ground with her index finger. "I always think this always goes by easier when you have a friend, don't you?"

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. "You saw past my stony exterior, did you."

"Your exterior doesn't hurt."

"Aren't you here to avoid divorce?" Sherlock asks, amused. 

"Oh, my husband and I, we have an agreement…"

"What happens in rehab?"

"In short." Marie smiles, crosses her leg towards him, tilting her head at him as she touches his hair lightly, experimentally. Sherlock can feel the trail of her eyes over his face, her cigarette apparently forgotten.

"My agreement is a little more binding," he says carefully. He's not flirted with often. If it were John's eyes lowering in that way, his breath would probably have left him, but he feels little more than a slight curiosity. The boredom here is almost as oppressive as the cravings, any distraction at all from it feels like a gift. 

Marie sighs, undeterred, his fingers skimming the length of his nape. Nothing about her seems calculating, in fact the opposite, she seems flush with the wholesome confidence of someone who is rarely turned down. "Doesn't she understand? We're not in the real world right now."

Sherlock stands, dislodging her hand. "We're not, but they are." 

"Are you alright?" Marie asks, her tone of flirtation fading. 

Sherlock nods slightly, worrying a piece of loose paper near the filter with his thumbnail. 

"Visitors this Sunday. That's not too long to wait."

Sherlock nods slightly, crushes his cigarette butt underfoot. He doesn't particularly feel inclined to explain that his boyfriend may believe him to be dead. He hasn't been able to speak to John since the night they fought, and no matter how many times he asked Mycroft at the hospital, he can't be sure he has passed on his letter. He can't imagine he would be as cruel to not let him know he's safe, at the bare minimum, but with Mycroft there is always room for doubt. The image of John frantic, or simply gone, rocks through him again. 

"The important thing…" Marie starts, holding a hand out for the packet of cigarettes as Sherlock fumbles slightly with his cast, taking one out and lighting it for him. "Well, I mean, when I first went to rehab, I thought it was all about thinking about my family, my husband, how much I hurt them... but I realised, finally, that you also have to be selfish. You have to not be ashamed to think about yourself, because you only have a month here. The people you love can deal with their anger and frustration… probably better than you can, since they're not addicts. But they can't deal with yours for you. You have to do that."

Sherlock pauses mid-drag, nodding slightly after a moment. "You're good at this, aren't you?"

"Dreadful," Marie laughs. "Clearly."

"Me too," Sherlock says. "It seems you're trying."

"What the fuck else do I have to do," Marie says lightly, laughing again. "Except depressing men, apparently…"

Sherlock shrugs, indicating the cigarette packet.

"I don't smoke," Marie says, smiling wryly as she slides one out. "So, what's going on at home?"

"Do you care?"

"I'm dying to know how little of a chance I have…"

"So little."

"Oh, come on, what could she have on me?" Marie jokes, leaning back as if to indicate her own splendor, which is not insignificant, if Sherlock were one to judge. "Besides not being in rehab. Which, actually, if you think about it, is a plus for me right now…" 

"Not a she," Sherlock says around his cigarette, laughing a little as Marie slumps exaggeratedly. "Sorry."

Marie shakes her head, turning the unlit cigarette over between her fingers. "As personally devastating as that is... it would be nice to have a friend, even if you're not a quote, unquote friend. Don't you think?"

Sherlock isn't sure why she pushes, and isn't quite sure why he relents. Nevertheless, she turns out to be right, it is somewhat easier with someone dropping into the opposite seat over breakfast, someone communicating amused irritation in group with only a slight widening of the eyes. It makes him think of the kind of low-key camaraderie some hidden part of him must have envied in the other students, back when he was sad and strung out at boarding school.

They spend a lot of time engaged in what amounts to gossiping, Sherlock's observation and Marie's enthusiasm for eavesdropping letting them piece together details of their more secretive fellow washouts. She also gently, persistently demands from Sherlock a participatory attitude in sessions and minimal self pity, which Sherlock eventually starts to see as helpful. Her good-natured frustration with him is a reminder of John, and also a distraction when thoughts of him grow too heavy.

These places are all the same, under the surface. The surface itself varies. The vaguely medical, vaguely corporate aesthetic of the last one used to bring to mind the image of a department store beautician in a lab coat. This one, with the tatami mats, the woodsy courtyards, the macrobiotic meals, he supposes is supposed to call to mind some kind of a spiritual retreat in a place more extotic than the outskirts of London. Everywhere, the smell of wood, the warm, low light.

The detox, at least, was unpleasant but not nightmarish, and the cravings abate far more swiftly this time around. There wasn't enough time to do much damage. Not to his health. But time has always moved excruciatingly slowly in rehab, the days almost an endlessly protracted ordeal. The thought of a month more is almost enough to send him immediately to the door, consequences be damned. 

\---

Marie knows better than to ask him if he's expecting a visitor come Saturday, but they still drift to the common room at the beginning of visiting hours, casually, as though they're not being propelled by twin hopes. 

"I'm just saying, a bit of soap is all a man needs... that's very sexy, don't you agree?" Marie is saying, neither of them particularly engaged in the conversation as they wind through the halls. "Cologne is just gilding the lily."

"Mm..."

"I mean, my husband wears it, and it's fine, I suppose, but... well, the smell of a person is best. Does yours?"

"Does mine what?"

"Wear anything."

"Sweatpants," Sherlock says dryly. He's not sure if the prospect of seeing him or the reality of a non-appearance is more frightening. 

"Idiot," Marie says, the patina of a well-hidden accent briefly revealing itself, as it has begun to, increasingly. "Wait, sweatpants because he exercises, or because he doesn't?"

Sherlock laughs shortly, but finds a response hard to manage as they draw up to the open door of the common room, the both of them wavering. The room is less full than he imagined, full of small, tea sipping clusters, every voice oddly subdued. Sherlock can't focus on a single face, his gaze sliding untethered from the steaming metal urns to the slightly fogged garden facing glass doors, the inexplicable outburst of wooden children's toys on the floor. 

Suddenly, Marie spots her husband and disengages wordlessly to go to him, her step lightening, doubling. Sherlock watches them with a tug of envy, finding himself frowning at their easy embrace, the way her husband lifts his gaze to project a dark look at him over her shoulder. _So much for an agreement._

Distracted, Sherlock doesn't register movement towards him until he feels a hand light on his sleeve. 

"What on earth are you all wearing?"

For a long moment, Sherlock can't respond. John looks so foreign in these surroundings, like something from another life, he can barely register his presence as reality. Before he's completely aware of himself he wraps his arms around his waist, tugging him close, feeling almost faint with relief. John doesn't seem to hesitate, his arms going around his shoulders, one hand tangling in his hair. 

Sherlock presses his face to his shoulder, a kind of sigh struggling its way from his throat. He holds him longer than he should, feels the muscles in John's back tighten in anticipation of moving away, and then relaxing again, letting himself be held. 

"Thank fuck," Sherlock says, muffled. He feels weak, as though the anxiety had calcified into some kind of armature inside him, and then vanished. 

John pulls away then, giving Sherlock the once over, his gaze lingering on the yellowing bruise on his eye, his cast. "Really, why are you all dressed like cult members?"

"It fosters a sense of community," Sherlock says, his voice sounding almost hysterical. He clears his throat. "I'm so... fuck, John. I didn't know, I couldn't contact you, I--"

"I know. I know..." John laughs slightly, weakly, touching Sherlock's cast with hesitant fingers. "I have about a thousand questions. I don't know where to start, really."

Sherlock nods, fighting an overwhelming impulse to take him in his arms again, to press his face to his hair, and stay there. Instead he swallows thickly, taking a deep breath. "Let's go outside. I'll tell you whatever you want."

As they head for the garden Marie spots him, pointing in a _is that him?_ way, grinning significantly at his nod, shooting a double thumbs up. Her husband's expression, also, has faded to something vaguely apologetic. Sherlock gives a cold kind of _simmer down_ expression, noticing the way John looks between them, then touches the small of his back to lead him possessively away. 

He knows a quiet area, another hemmed in grove with a bench, and takes him there, relieved to find it empty.

"What was that all about?"

"She's… happy you came…" Sherlock says, realising how odd that sounds. "I didn't know if you knew where I was, my brother, he said– did you get my letter?"

John looks surprised at that. "You wrote me one?"

"He was supposed to give it to you..."

"He sent me a goddamn brochure about this place. About two days ago…" John rakes his hand through his hair, the gesture furious enough to make Sherlock wither slightly, reach unconsciously for his cigarettes. "I went to see him. You'd been gone for a day or two. He told me he was doing me a favour, that he was just taking care of it, and I had no idea what had happened, I thought you were in hospital, or– god, Sherlock, give me one of those."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow, but obeys. John smoking is a reliable sign of trouble. 

"I suppose you were in hospital," he says, taking a seat on the bench.

"Briefly. I…" Sherlock indicates his cast flippantly. "After you left– John, I'm so sorry. After you left I really…" He takes an unsteady breath, the words thickening and catching in his throat. "I was… I didn't get into a fight. More of a robbery, I suppose, I was at this… place, and I was really, really– my usual dealer was away so I went somewhere else, and–"

John makes a faint shushing sound, shaking his head slightly, his eyes fixed on the cigarette in his hands. "Are you alright?"

"Just the arm… some bruises."

"Okay." John takes a long drag on the cigarette, more at ease with it than he has been in the past. He remembers a night, when was it? John curled against his side in the dark, breathing into his coat. _I shouldn't like the smell of smoke on you,_ he had said, quietly, his arm sliding around his side, the warm press of him against his body. _Don't take that the wrong way._

Sherlock goes to sit next to him. He's cold, but it feels right to suffer. John looks at him, silent for a long time, cigarette burning down between his fingers. 

"How long had it been?"

"A month. Month and a half. About the time… around the time my name got out."

John nods slightly. "Mycroft sent you here?"

Sherlock nods. "He arranged it. But when he told me, I was relieved. I'm not against it. I'm against how he did it, and that he didn't tell you everything, and that he didn't let you see me before I went into detox, when he could have, easily. I just… I wish I could tell you how sorry I am."

John nods slightly, takes a breath as he turns to look around the gardens. For all its careful maintenance, under the grey sky, the weak light, it seems more gloomy than pastoral. "It seems peaceful here, at least."

"I can't say I'm a fan of the futon."

John laughs, glancing back at him. "A creature of habit, that's why."

It's hard to meet his eyes, feeling as he does. "It's hard to sleep without you."

John takes a long moment to reply, looking down. "I know."

"What can I do–" Sherlock finds himself saying, sliding closer. "John…"

John shakes his head quickly, running his hands over his knees, gathering himself. To punish himself, Sherlock allows himself to look at him, become aware of every plane and curve, every detail of his face he's missed. There's not a part of him that doesn't ache to come closer, but he must not.

"You finally got reading glasses."

John looks up at him, surprise quickly fading into something nicer. He tilts his head, narrowing his eyes in the way he does when he's trying to figure out Sherlock's line of thought.

"You could have told me if you knew I needed them. That's actually quite mean."

Sherlock shrugs slightly. "I'm not a bloody optometrist. What type did you get?"

"Use your psychic powers and work it out," John says, grinning at Sherlock's immediate look of irritation. "Flattering ones, for your information. I look incredible."

Sherlock nods, risks a brush of his fingertips to the back of John's hand. John gives him a bracing kind of smile, then picks up a paper bag he brought with him, setting it between them. 

"Alright, this has all been thoroughly inspected on my way in," he says seriously, taking a smaller bag from inside and handing it to Sherlock. From the stamp on the bag he feels his chest tighten slightly, the bakery near their flat. Inside are two cream cheese danishes, and the prospect of refined sugar makes him almost sigh with happiness. 

"They weren't happy about those," John jokes, continuing to sort through the bag. "I bought you some books, the new Dovlatov translation, uh, Lydia Davis… I saw the bookshelf in the common room by the way, ouch." He glances up with a quick smile as Sherlock laughs. "Anyway, you can look at them. If you tell me what you want I can bring them next week. And don't get mad…" 

John pulls out a notepad, more like an adhesive-bound ream of paper, so big that he holds it with both hands.

"I know you're not feeling like writing right now…" he starts, shrugging quickly. "I get it. But I thought if you did, even if you just wanted to… whatever, love sonnets about how I look in glasses, or whatever you do on all those post-it notes at home, at least you won't run out of paper. And I got a pack of those pens you're always banging on about." John shows them, then drops them into the bag dismissively, as though he's afraid to push it. "And chocolate. And some cigarettes– they come with my profound disapproval and repulsion," he adds, as though he didn't crush his own out less than five minutes ago. He slides the bag slightly closer to Sherlock. 

Sherlock can't find words for a long moment, staring at the bags. The first thing that comes to mind, _you shouldn't have_ , he means literally. He tries to say it. "I don't deserve it."

"Brought it anyway, so," John says quietly. "Does it help if it says it makes me feel better? To try and have some… I don't know, some tiny amount of involvement in this process?"

"John…"

"I don't want to fight, I just–" John sets his jaw, shaking his head as he looks away. "It's really mixed up for me right now. Your brother, and… everything, the extent to which you went out of your way to deceive me, and now I'm just at home, literally sitting at home completely shut out of this entire situation. Not even knowing where you were, just completely feeling like I'm not a part of your life. I know that part wasn't your choice, but…" 

Sherlock nods, swallowing thickly. An apology doesn't seem quite enough. John looks back at him, studying his face in an oddly intent way, then drops his gaze. 

"What's important is that you're here."

"You're important. Anything I want to say just sounds like a platitude, but I, fuck, John, you are–"

"I don't–" John interrupts, pushing his hair back. "There's a lot of things in my head right now, and I just can't be sure I'm directing them all in the right place just yet. I don't want be cruel to you, because it's not immediately important. It's important that you're here, and focussed on this, and not thinking about things that can wait."

"It can't… wait," Sherlock says, moving the bag to the ground and shifting closer. "John, I can't wait a month to know that you're alright."

"I'm alright. I'm fine," John says dismissively, not responding to Sherlock's presence, his touch on his arm. 

"I can't just pretend you're at not home feeling like shit about something I did. I can't compartmentalise it like that." 

"I think your ability to compartmentalise is the least of your problems," John says, his voice cool, his gaze fixed on something across the garden. 

Sherlock swallows and shifts back to give John space, watching him rake his hands through his hair again.

"Sorry. That's the kind of thing I wanted to avoid…" 

"You're allowed to be angry at me. You're allowed to tell me you're angry."

"I'm angry, but you should know that, Sherlock. You should know I'm angry that you could lie so easily to me. And that you let me help you do this, that while I was being your emotional support, and your practical support, answering your phone, reading your emails, doing all your talking for you when your name got out, thinking I was helping– I was just fucking freeing you up to go get high. And also…" John chews his lip. "All I wanted to do was be careful with you, do the right thing by you– physically. I thought that you were you trusting me more… do you know how that makes me feel now? You told me that sex and drugs are too mixed up for you, that you've been hurt... and, alright, we weren't hardcore fucking or whatever, but we were doing more. And I never would have consented to any of it if I knew I was helping you hurt yourself, or reinforce things for you. Never." John stands, pacing away to the edge of the trees, pushing his hands into the pockets of his cardigan.

"No–" Sherlock says, violently, standing as well. "John, that wasn't what it was."

"Please don't."

"John– everything I said, that I wanted to try, everything we did, that was before this happened, it wasn't… they're not connected."

"Stop it."

"I just wanted to be with you. I wanted to be close to you. I was– scared, you know, and guilty, I didn't want to be relapsing, and lying, and I just needed you. I needed things to be alright with us."

"That's the _fucking_ problem," John snaps, turning back to him. "What do you think would have happened if you told me? I would have tried to make you stop, and you didn't want to stop, so you lied. That's it. It doesn't make me feel better that you used me to console yourself without a single thought about what doing that entails."

Sherlock falls quiet, trying to steady himself. John stares at the ground as though there's some vital information to be found there. 

"I should go. I didn't want this, I'm sorry, I really wanted to just come and support you, and…"

Sherlock doesn't know what to say except _please don't_. A part of him would be happy to be ripped to pieces if it was John doing it, John here with him. He grits his teeth a little against his emotions, takes a deep breath.

"I'm so sorry."

"Thanks," John nods. "I'll come next week."

"Thank you…" Sherlock says in a breath. "I'll… thank you for the paper and the books. And the food."

"You can at least send letters, can't you?"

"Yes, and smoke signals…" Sherlock attempts a joke, feels almost exhilarated to see a small smile.

"Send me a shopping list, then, if you want something. I'll watch the skies for an ISBN."

"Just you, John…"

John moves forward to hug him quickly, but tightly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Alright. Walk me out?"

"Yeah…" Sherlock says quickly, touching John's arm, then dropping his hand as John starts to walk. "How's the writing going?"

John laughs dryly, tilting his head in a kind of shrug. "Well, my proof reader went missing."

Sherlock glances at him, laughing in surprise. "I miss it."

"I miss yours, too, so get to work," John says, nodding significantly at the bag Sherlock is carrying as they step back inside. "Be good, alright?"

Sherlock nods, aching, almost weak with the desire to leave with him. He collects himself, stepping forward to press a kiss to John's forehead. "I love you."

"I know," John murmurs, drawing away. He lingers a moment, touches his arm, and turns to weave his way out to the exit, ignoring Marie's wave magnificently, as though he's worked out something he had no way of knowing. 

She seems to notice Sherlock's expression– hangdog, if he had a mirror– and detaches from her husband to talk to him. 

"That didn't look great," she says conspiratorially, quirking an eyebrow.

"Wasn't."

"Sometimes they need to get things off their chest. It's good for you. You need to hear it."

"Alright," Sherlock murmurs absently, still staring at the door John left through. Misery floods him, leaves him almost mute. "I'm a bad person."

"Probably," Marie says, without concern. "Want to meet my husband?"

Sherlock shrugs, allowing himself to be led, introduced, sized up. He participates in the conversation without much awareness of it– he's sitting, there's a cup of tea in front of him, something about tennis. He needs to retreat somewhere, but he feels fixed to the place, offering an anecdote about Fred Perry he had used in a novel, sometime. He should remember the name of it. 

The room is flooded with a wan light that turns every shadow greyly diffuse, grimy. Eventually he begins to summon the presence of mind to excuse himself, go to his room and do some hard thinking, when John returns at the entrance, scanning the room, presumably, for him. Sherlock stands automatically, hating how open, how needy his expression must seem.

John locks his eyes on him, crosses to take his hand, lead him back out to the garden, searching wordlessly for a place to be alone. 

They walk along the paths until John is seemingly satisfied with their privacy, shielded behind the low branches of a large tree. He presses his body flush against him, then takes his hair as he rises into a kiss that takes Sherlock's breath. Sherlock grips his cardigan without a thought, a soft sound of surprise escaping as John stretches into him, holding him close with two cold hands at his jaw. 

John sighs as he breaks away, his hands dropping to rest at Sherlock's waist, dropping his head to his shoulder. 

"I don't want to go home like this."

"No, John, you were right. What you said. You don't have to–"

"It's not for you," John says roughly, drawing away. "I can't go home, and sit in our flat alone, missing you, angry at you, thinking... that things aren't going to be alright. I just can't."

Sherlock touches John's hair gingerly, biting back a sigh as John turns his head towards his palm. He doesn't speak for a long moment, as though collecting himself, then looks back at Sherlock's face. 

"I want to kill whoever did this to you," he says softly, leaning up to brush a kiss to his fading bruise, his hand dropping to graze his cast. "I want to kill your brother. I want to kill you..." John looks down, letting Sherlock draw him closer, lets him press a firm kiss to his shoulder. "I was scared."

"John..."

"What I wanted to say when I came," he continues, his voice steadier. "Is that when you're done here I'm going to be here waiting for you, and that we're OK. I want you to focus on being here now."

"No, I hurt you, I'm–" He falls quiet as John raises his eyes to meet his, his expression calm.

"Remember when you told me when you couldn't process emotions, when you were writing, you'd break them down into parts?"

"Yes..." Sherlock says quietly, closing his eyes as John strokes his hair.

"Well, to break mine down– the parts that count for you right now, anyway... if you feel worried about whether I'm angry, or hurt, or whatever, I just want you to remember remember that my love for you isn't conditional on you never fucking up, or never hurting me. What's conditional is my happiness... I didn't realise how much so until I couldn't find you." He pauses, takes a breath, then shrugs a little. "It's conditional on you being healthy, and safe, and... a little less importantly, I suppose, but still so... so hopelessly, you being with me. So if you're here and you feel worried about me, that's how you fix it. That's how you look after me. Do everything you can to work on this, and then come home to me. I'll be waiting. Alright?"

Sherlock nods quickly, his throat tight, making his next breath come rough, uneven. 

"Too much?"

"No..." Sherlock says weakly, swallowing hard as John wraps his arms around him, drawing him close firmly, almost protectively. "I'm just..."

"I know it's been hard. I know it wasn't all under your control," John murmurs against his neck, his fingers seeking the back of his head to slowly, gently stroke there, as though to settle him. 

Sherlock shakes his head instinctively, not wanting to accept it. The way John had spoken before, his anger, had been real, and he wants to resist the bandage he's trying to apply over it. Still, he finds a greedier part of him melt into it, absorbing his deliberate kindness, letting its warmth work its way through him.

"We have to talk about it. About you. I can't forget about it, John..."

"I know. Later," John says softly. "Please."


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry for slow updates and cartoon rehab!

John never thought of himself as the type to shut himself off, to let his priorities blur in the thrall of a new relationship. It's not until their separation that he had come to realise just how Sherlock's presence had expanded to fill his life, and to see the emptied spaces is a little lonely, a little freeing. 

To rectify it, he refamiliarises himself with the notion of a social calendar, then fills it. He joins in on the Kierkegaard reading group he'd been repeatedly brushing off, takes odd jobs around the department, accepts every coffee, lunch, dinner party invite that comes his way. It's not what he wants to do, not really, but it's important to try. 

After the disaster that was the first visit, he aims to keep his next single-mindedly casual. He focusses mainly on delivering supplies, playing chess, and manually relaying the contents of Sherlock's inbox. Afterwards all the things he didn't say linger with him, heavy and unwieldy, only able to be worn down by perpetual activity. 

He gets letters from Sherlock, sometimes more than one a day, that at first seem oddly brief, disjointed, with no adherence at all to the conventions of letter writing— a paragraph, written large enough to take a full page, concerning an owl that roosts in a tree outside his room. Some thoughts on a disagreement they had months ago about Borges, and why John should reconsider. A William Carlos Williams poem torn from a book that John tries hard not to overthink. Some unusual fact about a fellow patient or staff member, and how exactly he came to discover it. Occasional, minimalist love letters that make him flush, reading them alone, the hair rising on the back of his neck with a kind of longing. 

Although not unwelcome, they leave him perplexed at first, especially as his more carefully composed replies seem to go unmentioned. It takes time to realise that the sentences appended, contextless, to the backs of envelopes, are in fact his attempt at replies: _I prefer the 1959 translation_ , or, _clever; go with that_ , that he must have scrawled has he picked up John's letters and sent his own mail at the same time. 

It is as he's leaving an artist talk at Whitechapel one afternoon he realises why the stream of consciousness style feels so familiar: _I'm being texted._

He makes his third visit on a rain-drenched Sunday to submit to being casually thrashed in three games of chess. Sherlock looks increasingly drawn, thin enough to begin with that even a week's interval renders his face concerningly deep-shadowed. He considers upping the quantity of food he brings, but in reality can't imagine that it's in any way the issue. According to his bewildering new friend, his private therapy sessions have been frequent, and grueling. What is being discussed, however, seems to be a highly guarded topic on his part, and John's campaign of amiability is hardly conducive to broaching it. 

"You need a better opponent," John sighs, taking a sip of cooling tea as Sherlock packs away the chess pieces. "Did you check to see if Deep Blue had the morning free?"

"That's a very dated reference," Sherlock says absently, ignoring John's eye roll. "I like playing you. Your style is interesting."

"Death twitches, is that a style?"

Sherlock glances up, his eyes narrowing slightly in a smile, then glances out the glass doors. "We can't go for a walk..."

A sudden round of _happy birthday_ catches their attention as it swells up from a cluster of strangers across the room. It takes a moment before John spots the target: a tiny, wide-eyed boy with a cake set in front of him, who is probably storing the tender moment away for a therapy session that lies a decade or two in his future.

It's John who breaks their silence. "I'll get more tea."

"Wait," Sherlock says, catching John's wrist as he stands. "I want to take you somewhere."

John pauses, then tilts his head. "Didn't know that was allowed."

"Everyone else does it," Sherlock says, a little darkly, as he moves to his feet. "Besides, it's raining."

"Of course, we may not have much time left on this earth," John mutters, hesitating a moment before he realises Sherlock isn't waiting for him. He picks up the bag of supplies he brought to give him and follows him out, unmolested by the staff who wait by the doors of the room.

They make their way past airy meeting rooms, then closed doors with doctor's name plates, then some kind of gym, each section linked by wooden walkways framed by indoor gardens. Eventually they arrive at a heavy double door that Sherlock pushes open, revealing a kind of music room-cum-lecture theatre. Five or so rows of horseshoe-curved wooden benches and tables lead in steps down to a modest stage, with well-used instruments littering the wings. Something about the honey-coloured wood of the seating and tables and dim light, the room windowless except for a skylight that illuminates the stage, brings back an odd kind of sense memory of the small lecture theatres he spent his undergraduate life in. 

Sherlock drops down the steps heavily, seemingly comfortable enough in the space for John to follow without question. 

"I could be slipping you so much contraband right now," John jokes, trailing behind him, the sound of his boots on the steps ringing out that much louder than Sherlock's fleet-footedness.

"It's not jail," Sherlock says, sounding vaguely put out. 

"And yet I still get searched on entry..." John mutters, sliding onto the table that runs closest to the stage.

Sherlock looks over at him witheringly, then crouches down to collect up an assortment of percussion instruments left strewn across the stage with a possessiveness that strikes John as somewhat notable. This concern for his surroundings is something he's picked up on at home, as well: the level of disorder he tolerates in his living conditions seem to inversely correlate with the state of his thought processes. It's as though he can deal with chaos in his head, or on his desk, but not both at the same time. 

He reaches into the bag he brought as Sherlock continues to drift with whatever tide is currently pulling him, takes out a tin of almond biscuits and helps himself.

"'People will interrupt someone reading, but not someone playing an instrument'," John says experimentally. Sherlock had told him that, months ago, as a way of explaining his talent on the violin. Apparently his best method way to withdraw entirely at boarding school was to do it in plain sight, on a recital stage, or in the music room, his instrument allowing him to be both present and as far away as muscle memory and a wandering mind can take him. When he needed to, he could fill the room with a sound to replace his voice, the simple concept of _practice_ easily buying him hours of his own thoughts.

Sherlock looks over, studying John for a moment. "I suppose I've been caught."

"You're in here a lot?"

"When I need to be..." Sherlock says, barely audible as he goes back to tidying what John presumes is the remainder of some group's music therapy session. 

"You really have to eat, by the way," he calls over to him. "You look like you should be guarding a crypt."

Sherlock turns back with an expression that seems half irritated, half hurt. John knows the rich seam of vanity that runs through him, but still, he's surprised.

"I just meant you've lost weight—"

"It's very cute when you try to show off your powers of observation, John," Sherlock says coolly, crouching to close the lid of the wooden chest he was stacking instruments in. "But you may be surprised to learn that there are mirrors here."

John rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to the biscuits, resolving to not escalate. "I'm sorry. I'm worried about you." It occurs to him the sight of his boyfriend, crumb-covered and plowing through an entire tray of ricciarelli, may not exactly serve to work up Sherlock's appetite, but he picks out another anyway. 

"Would you talk to me?" 

"There's a set of scales down the hall, John, how about we pop down for an official measurement?"

"For Christ's sake, Sherlock, not about that–"

"Then what?" Sherlock snaps. 

John casts around for something to say that isn't flammable. "I don't get much time with you, I don't want to fight. If I did, it wouldn't be about this. I just..." He trails off as Sherlock's glare fades to something less easily classifiable, then disappears as he turns away.

John stifles a sigh, pretending to wring Sherlock's neck behind his back. "So, I read the brochure, we're supposed to use this time for 'discussions of your week's insights and progress'. Shall we get stuck in?" 

"Please don't..." Sherlock murmurs, and when John looks over at him he's almost shocked by his expression, something unbearably heavy about it.

John bites the inside of his lip, frozen in a kind of indecision, immediately regretting his flippancy. Sherlock raises his eyes to meet his, and it feels like forever since he saw this, the mask completely gone. He forgets he even wears it. 

"Why did you ask me here?" John asks finally, filing the rough edges of his tone away.

"I wanted to talk normally."

"Sherlock, this is normal. If you were wasting away at home, I'd say something."

" _Exactly_. Out there you wouldn't say it. Alone, you did. I want to talk to you like you are. Not… this bloodless, talking to a hospital patient nonsense you're so set on."

John swears under his breath, stretching his legs out. He can feel Sherlock's gaze on him, but avoids his eyes. 

"If you hate me, _hate_ me," Sherlock says, his voice growing more insistent. 

"I don't. I'm just trying to do right by you." 

"Well, stop it," Sherlock says roughly, crossing the room to stand in front of John. "I _know_ you. I know you. I see you the lines you get between your eyebrows when you don't sleep, I see this--" Sherlock pushes up the sleeve of John's sweater to reveal a bruise he hadn't noticed had come up. It must been from the night before, tipsily knocking into his taxi door as he got in. "I see this." He crouches to pull up the ends of John's black jeans, revealing the slightly mismatched socks under his boots, two uneven shades. John frowns slowly.

"So I'm behind on laundry." His protest is entirely perfunctory, accepting of the fact that Sherlock knows exactly what that means. 

"Should I keep going?" Sherlock asks, still crouched with his hands gripping his shins, his gaze drilling up at him. "I see you nursing you right hand."

"Fuck off," John sighs, clenching and unclenching his right hand without thinking. It's a kind of a tic, a stress response that developed after it was broken in his attack; when upset he finds himself unconsciously tucking it in a pocket or under his other arm, as though protecting it. It's odd, but he swears it actually hurts sometimes, as if stress or anger inflames his whole body, sending the damaged circuits of nerves and bone there sparking. It irritates him that it's on Sherlock's radar, although, yes, of course it is. 

"Every week, you come here, every part of your body is screaming to me you're not doing well, and the whole time you're wearing a big stupid smile. Do you know how that feels?" 

John tips his head back in frustration. "I'm trying to keep busy. That's all. I don't have you to eat up all my spare time, after all. So what if I go to bed late, or have a few glasses of wine at dinner, or don't bother with housework--" 

" _John._ " 

"And I miss you. It's not fun for me. Can't I miss you?"

"So tell me you miss me. Don't laugh and make jokes and... make me read you like that, it feels like you're lying, I hate it…"

John tries to resist the flare of anger, the urge to really dig into the subject of lying, but Sherlock seems to realise on his own, murmurs an apology as he straightens up again. They're still for a long moment, until John reaches for Sherlock's hand, shaking his head in a way he knows Sherlock will understand as _enough_. 

Sherlock rests his other hand on John's cheek, lowers his head in a way that makes John think he's going to kiss him, but instead he draws in close, takes a long breath against his hair. 

"I'm trying not to think about you in overly abstract terms," Sherlock murmurs. 

"What terms would they be?" John asks, smiling faintly. It's something he might say as he crashes into the kitchen, frustrated about a background character he's fleshing out.

"Home. Mainly," Sherlock says after a pause. "I know you can't be a symbol for things, safety and...normalcy. Joy. I know it can't be like that…"

"It can be. Maybe not immediately. It's on you." John sighs. "Don't you think I want to be your home?" 

"I know you don't. You've put a lot of things on ice for me."

"What, you think I want to rip you to pieces?" John asks, sliding forward on the table, hooking his legs behind Sherlock's to draw him closer. 

"You should."

"Things tend to cool after you've put them on ice…" John murmurs, and although it feels good to say, he's not sure if it's as true as he'd like. 

Sherlock shakes his head, dropping his hands to John's thighs. John tips forward, resting his head against Sherlock's chest, breathing him in for the first time in what feels like forever. 

"I need you home with me so badly that anger feels very low-priority," he says softly, closing his eyes as he wraps his arms around his waist. "Okay? If I can't sleep, it's because you're not there. If I'm drinking, it's because it's the only way I can get through dinner conversations, when all I can think of is that I want to be talking to you. If I don't do housework, it's because being home makes me crazy at the moment. That's all."

Sherlock doesn't speak for a long time. "You should be angry about that, too," he says, something in his voice sounding wrong in a way John can't quite pin down. 

He exhales as Sherlock strokes the back of his neck, feeling his body relax almost instinctively against his. "It's only a little more than a week to go," he realises with a small laugh, closing his eyes slowly as Sherlock presses a kiss to the top of his head. 

"But it won't be over..."

The words linger in his head as he drives home, eats toast at the sink, the irritating pessimism of it chafing at him as he tries to prepare notes for a first year guest lecture on the November Group, already imagining the glazed eyes of the students, the line of attention that will slowly slide down to glowing smartphones. Is it really his fault if it feels pointless, all of a sudden? It's not as though his outlook in general is unfailingly sunny, not as though he came back from Germany floating on a cloud. In fact, general sense of okayness he's felt in the past year has been, he realises now, built up in part by Sherlock, by adventure, by the confusing, consuming, fascinating process of learning about him, being a partner to him. The thought is sobering, unflattering. 

If this is why he launches himself with new vigor into his thesis in the following week, he can see it as a silver lining. Something about that entirely solitary, entirely self centered process of _being busy writing_ , of limiting social contact to complaints of being _bloody exhausted_ as he passes an acquaintance in the library stacks, of drinking pots of coffee late into the night, builds him up. Increasingly he feels himself a self-contained entity, propelled by purely self-generated motion, which is why when he returns home on a Friday evening to see Sherlock reading in the living room, his first feeling is a kind of disappointment. 

"What are you doing here?" John hears himself asking, his heart pounding for a reason he can't process in the moment. He's not supposed to leave until Monday. For an absurd moment he wonders if it _is_ Monday, until he sees Sherlock stand with a kind of placating gesture.

"Why are you here?" John asks again, dropping his bookbag onto the couch. 

"Mycroft's driver picked me up--"

"Three days early?" John asks, slowly. "Sherlock--"

"Well… surprise?" Sherlock says slowly, his expression, which John realises only as it fades was happiness, turning more sober. 

"Please tell me you didn't get kicked out of rehab. Please tell me you didn't walk out."

"There wasn't… when I told you it was Monday when I first got in, it was tentative, I wasn't certain. And when I found out the actual date, I just thought I'd leave it and surprise you. John…"

John stands frozen a moment, studying Sherlock's face. "You didn't know."

"Yes."

"And you decided to get your _brother_ to organise a lift for you. To surprise me."

" _Yes_."

"How on earth am I supposed to believe that?" John asks, his voice rising with a kind of humiliating anger.

"John-- trust me," Sherlock says, taking a step towards him. 

John widens his eyes, incredulous. "You're right, you've been out of rehab, what, fifteen minutes now? It's about time I bloody well--" John pats his pockets for his phone, then goes to his bag to pull it out. " _Trusted_ you, isn't it?" 

Sherlock watches on silently as John turns away and calls the centre, relieved that Sherlock had listed him as his contact person. _Yes_ , he's told, he's completed his program, _no_ , there was no issue. Relief doesn't entirely displace his panic, misplaced as it may be, and as he turns back to Sherlock he tosses his phone on the couch, refusing to meet his eyes.

"That's how much I trust you," he says, turning to head to his room.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. I'm so sorry. I feel like I have to explain myself. I got knotted up with a plot direction that I couldn't work out and in the end I just gave up, and since I abandoned this I've been writing original fiction so this just fell off my radar completely. But I logged in and found comments left from people still reading and I felt a.) amazed that that was the case and b.) so, so guilty to anyone who slogged through 70k words of this mess only to get to such an awful, unsatisfactory endpoint. This is only small, and more of a thank you to anyone who read this, but this is how I imagined the story finishing (after a bit more stuff), so I hope this is something. Thank you so much for reading, and I'm sorry.

Sherlock hears John's footsteps on the stairs, his ears almost ringing with it. It's not unexpected, not really, this reaction, but to say he spent much time imagining it would be untrue. His imagined homecoming were distinctly more satisfying, less thrown objects and dramatic exits, more prolonged physical contact, all of which he had mentally sketched out in detail. It's possible the time away, the empty hours spent imagining him, has left him out of sync with the reality of where they stand with each other. More out of sync, he could say.

He slips a bookmark in his page and drops the book he was reading on the couch, looking around the room. It's impossible not to see the evidence of John's life here without him, the steady erosion of Sherlock's presence. As soon as he starts picking it out he can't stop-- missing ashtrays, the cluster of fabric swatches he was testing three or four cases ago finally taken down from by the window, his books replaced neatly on bookshelves. It's too much. He feels the urge to run, to snatch John up and find a place of neutral territory. There they could have the fight they need to have, then leave the scorched earth behind them when they're done.

John turns to look at him from where he stands by the window as he enters the bedroom, his expression guarded. After a moment he runs his hands into his hair, turning away again.

"I'm not _trying_ to be awful…" he says, sighing slightly as he sits on the bed. "I'm so sure about how I want to be, you know, but then I see you and… it's like I can't help myself."

Sherlock tilts his head slightly, closing the door and leaning against it. "The sight of me sends you into a rage, in other words," he says, keeping his tone as light as he can manage.

" _Maybe_ ," John says, folding his arms over his knees. "I'm sorry."

Sherlock watches him a moment, the urge to leave with him, to just go, rising again. 

"Come on," he says, moving to the wardrobe. He pulls an empty duffel bag from the top shelf, dropping it on the bed next to John. 

John turns his head to look at Sherlock, frowning slowly. 

"I'm already packed, aren't I? Come on." 

John says silent, eyes warily on Sherlock's face as he drops to a crouch in front of him. 

"We need to talk, don't we?"

"Decidedly yes."

"Let's go. Let's go and talk somewhere with a view. A high thread count."

John laughs, reaching out to touch Sherlock's shoulder, making a soft, frustrated sound after a moment.

"Where?"

"Who cares," Sherlock says, something blooming inside him at the sight of John's smile. "Can't you feel it? It's heavy here, John."

John looks down, laughing again after a long moment. "Heavy... is it," he says softly, grabbing the bag and standing, quickly, as though the thought suddenly took root in him as well. "Fine. Alright. Fine."

Sherlock smiles triumphantly, sitting back on his heels as he watches John pack. His eyes linger at his nape, the line of his back, holding back a sigh at the urge to hold him-- one of his particularly well-trodden, if more innocent, mental images of his return. It was possibly his favourite when lying half asleep, imagining opening the front door to John, who would slip quietly against him, breath warm against his chest. So much for that.

John doesn't say much as he packs, or in the taxi to the airport, except to briefly panic when Sherlock tells the driver to head to Heathrow. 

"I find it hard to believe this is the first time you've done this," Sherlock says quietly, and John's vaguely chastened look tells him all he needs to know. Impulsive John, who not too long ago rushed without word to Paris just to find a book to clear Sherlock's name, should hardly be shaken by an impromptu holiday.

At the airport he's quiet, too, nursing a coffee as Sherlock finds seats on whatever flight is leaving. Budapest, then. After a month without so much as a stroll around the neighbourhood, the prospect of unimpeded movement in and of itself is a relief. 

John looks curiously up at him as when notices the class of seat on the boarding pass, but lets it go without comment. Instead he seems to drift, slightly detached, through security, boarding, staying close to Sherlock's side, but barely saying a word. 

"It's not the first time I've run away, but it's the first time I've done it in anything but economy," he murmurs as the safety talk ends, looking curiously around the cabin. "Did you have loyalty points?" 

"Something like that," Sherlock says vaguely. His fingers barely have the chance to itch for want of a book before John takes the one he was reading before he left for rehab from his bag, pressing it into his hands. 

"But don't ignore me the whole flight."

Sherlock looks down at the cover in surprise, then up at John's face, losing words for a long moment. The longing he had felt for him when he was away, the acute, ever present awareness of his absence, feels almost keener in hindsight. 

"It's just a book," John says, his tone slightly belligerent, as though he knows exactly the nauseating turn Sherlock's thoughts had just taken.

"It's not," Sherlock murmurs, but says nothing further, even when John settles his head against his shoulder, his eyes falling closed.

Of course. He was so caught up in what was missing from the flat that he didn't register what had increased-- the piles of books covering their table, the marked up drafts, the empty coffee cups. The dark circles. It hasn't been easy for him. He's tired.

John's breath evens through the fabric of his shirt as the plane reaches altitude and levels off. Sherlock tips his head slightly against him, his feeling the warmth of his hair against his jaw, his eyes tracking the same line of the book again and again. He can repent for his oversight, he supposes. Find the best bed in town, and deliver John to it. 

\---

The lights are coming on in the streets as they make their way into the city. It's changed-- physically, of course, but also in the way a place can shift and find a new form in one's memory. 

John is still vague from sleep by the time they arrive at the hotel, but he's aware enough hesitate as they enter the lobby, the marble floor reflecting back the sound of each footstep. He shoots a now familiar look of suspicion at Sherlock, long and quiet and searching, but says nothing.

The room itself is clean and still, almost vacuum sealed, flowers fresh in vases, lamps pre-lit. Two couches face each other in the centre of the suite, as though the room itself was expecting a capital-C conversation.

"This is…" John starts, leaving his bag on the sofa and heading for the balcony, almost as though drawn there. He opens the french doors and steps out, silent as Sherlock joins him. The Danube from their window seems shockingly jewel-like in the fading light, glossily reflecting the lights of the city across the water.

Sherlock slips a cigarette out from the pack in his pocket, John shaking his head slightly as he offers him one. 

"I feel like I have to bring this up," John says quietly, waving his hands slightly to indicate the opulence of their surroundings.

"I mean…" Sherlock says, keeping his tone light. "We could try leaving it."

"Sherlock."

Sherlock nods slightly. "There's a reason why I left early… besides good behaviour, I mean." He tries for a joke, fails. "Mycroft wanted to speak with me before he left for Kiev. That's what I was doing this morning."

John nods slightly, his gaze steady on Sherlock's face. 

"The gist of it, basically, was that he's cutting me off, in effect. Well... not cutting me off. Cutting me out. He's given up, I suppose. Besides all the big brotherly things he was doing-- I mean Big Brother in the Orwellian sense, but I suppose in the literal sense as well--" Sherlock pauses, feeling himself get tangled. He worries at a sliver of paper coming loose at the end of his cigarette with his thumbnail, slowing down. 

"You probably gathered this already, but he was controlling the family assets. That was in the will. After my parents died he thought that giving me access to resources like that was too much rope. Which may have been true, considering. But today he told me... well, that he was done, and to take the rope and do what I will."

Sherlock can see John working, sifting through his questions like a hand of cards.

"Are you alright?"

Sherlock nods, almost surprised. He was expecting to be asked something more concrete. "We haven't got along in a long time. It wasn't out of nowhere. The way he is with me probably seems to you a little--"

"Unhealthy?" John supplies, not kindly.

"Well…" Sherlock gives a lopsided nod. "He is worried about me. But more than that he absolutely despises this part of me. To him, it's weakness, a deficit of character. Of will. You probably don't want to hear this, but I'm doing better, this is-- what happened, comparatively speaking, was nothing compared to when I was younger, but that it's happening at all still, to him is almost unforgivable. So that he's washing his hands of me is not a shock, exactly."

John says nothing for a long time, the sounds of the street below filling the silence. Suddenly he sighs, slouches with his arms folded on the wrought iron railing of the balcony. 

"So you came home from that, and I was horrible to you."

Sherlock laughs slightly. "You came here with me."

"You didn't answer my question," John says quietly, turning his head to look up at Sherlock.

"Am I alright?"

John nods.

"You came here with me," Sherlock says again, smiling in earnest now. 

John groans slightly, but when Sherlock looks at him, he's smiling as well, his eyes lingering on something across the river, over in that other city. "One more night without you and I might have gone crazy." Sherlock must seem surprised, because John laughs again, taking the cigarette from him. "I wouldn't be like this with you, blowing up, making it all about me, if I wasn't just so... invested in you. Us." He watches the smoke carry itself out and away as he exhales. "You know that."

Sherlock's hands curl against the railing, swallowing against the throb of his heart in his throat. He nods once, avoiding looking at John.

"I think it would be easier to be selfless for a while if I felt like I could ever just walk away. I probably would have been nicer to you. Maybe you'd prefer that right now."

"No…" Sherlock says quietly, taking the cigarette as John passes it back. "I'd prefer you shouting and thrashing against the… you know, against the unyielding bonds of our love."

"Idiot," John murmurs, his gaze settling on Sherlock's face again. "I am, though."

"Thrashing?"

"In love."

Sherlock feels suddenly full with things he wants to say that they all catch in his throat at once. John doesn't seem to mind, watching him smoke through his lashes for a long moment, then turning back to the river, taking a long breath. 

"How much? From Mycroft?"

"Enough."

John laughs slightly. "Enough for what?"

"Anything. Whatever you want." 

John's expression changes subtly. "I wasn't--"

"I know. I know you weren't." It would be easier to talk about this if there was no distance between them, if he could say the words directly against his skin, say the words into the same air John was breathing in. Yet it seems as though it would be for John to come closer. 

"A lot of people would be happy about it."

Sherlock nods. "I suppose… when it comes with the air of punishment it's hard to see it for what it is. It's frightening, in a way."

John seems to think for a long while, tracing his fingers idly along the wrought iron edge of the railing. "It is a lot of rope. But you're not alone. I hope you can get to a point where you can trust me… I mean, if something happens again. If you feel like you're slipping, that you trust in me enough to know that you don't have to hide it."

John seems to hesitate slightly when he looks up and sees Sherlock's expression. 

"I'll probably be angry, and be mean, and… fall short like I did this time. But it won't change how I feel, or how much I want to be there for you. With you." John touches Sherlock's sleeve gently, holding his wrist a moment. "Then it doesn't have to be rope, because I can be there too. Like your failsafe."

"It would be frightening to need you more than I already do." 

"I can't imagine anything that would happen… even if you cheated on me, or hated me, that wouldn't make me stop needing, really needing for you to be okay. I feel like that's kind of irrevocable for me. Even if I wasn't…" John laughs slightly. "Stupid with how much I love you. If someone cast a spell and waved all that away, I would be your friend. I hope you'd be mine, too."

John brushes a kiss to Sherlock's jaw and drifts back inside, leaving Sherlock to finish his cigarette with some dignity in tact. 

They go to dinner after, in a small cave of a restaurant Sherlock went to years ago, with his family. Unlike the city, it feels just the same after all the years, and the amber glow of the light that makes Sherlock think of a fossilised record, frozen in time. If he looks around, maybe he would see his parents, his brother-- and it's strange, because even in his memories his brother is wearing a suit, although surely as a teenager that wasn't the case. Even as a boy Mycroft had the bearing of someone in full formalwear, as though that whole time he had been waiting to assume his true form.

"You know, about honey…" John says, taking a mouthful of the honey cake they were sharing.

"Hm?"

"What I want to know about honey is… alright, so there are two Neanderthals."

"I suppose there were."

"And one day one of the Neanderthals looks over at another and says, you know... been thinking about those insects-- you know, the furry ones, not great at flying straight, really big into stinging..."

"A little too big into stinging."

"Tell me about it. Always getting worked up over nothing. Anyway, you know their house?"

"Ah," Sherlock says, taking a sip of the water he had pointedly stuck to all night. "You mean the amorphous mass of insect secretions stuck to that tree?"

"Just the same. What I've just _got_ to know is… what do you think that tastes like?"

Sherlock laughs, and John smiles, pushing the plate towards him.

"Will you help me finish this?" 

"If I say no, will you call me a crypt keeper again?"

"Oh, come now. I said sorry."

"How odd. The malnourishment must be affecting my memory."

"Oh no, I'm a beautiful genius and my chubby idiot of a boyfriend called me thin," John says, sinking back in his chair in a sarcastic show of misery. "My cheekbones are even more impressive now."

"You're not chubby."

"I've been eating for two since you've been away." John looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. " _Idiot_ goes uncontested, does it?"

It doesn't, but John knows that very well already. After dinner they cross the river, and climb the castle hill until they have a view of the city, until they're alone. They're in a small lookout off the path, a stone railing between them and a sheer drop. John leans against it, the night breeze from the river catching in his hair. 

"If you don't want to go back," Sherlock says, on an impulse. "We don't have to. You don't have to." 

"What does that mean?" John asks, turning to him. 

"Only that… only that there's nothing stopping you." _Anymore._ He can't quite bring himself to spell out the fact that Sherlock now has the ability to give him almost anything he wants, or needs, even if that means to be away from him, to be done with this. 

John looks at Sherlock, his eyes dark and hard to read. Harder than normal. He reaches into his pocket and takes something out, small. When he presses it into Sherlock's hand it feels smooth to the touch, and warm from being close to his body.

Sherlock looks down at it. The only light is from the city, but even so he understands what it is. He opens the box, and the ring inside glows brighter than seems natural. 

John is very quiet. He's not down on one knee, thank god, but he's serious, tense. The gravity between them shifts. 

"If there's nothing stopping me--" he starts, but cuts off when Sherlock tugs him close, his head buried in crook of his neck.

Sherlock can't say anything for a long time, just stands there, hands fisted in John's coat, breathing his scent. 

"I have one too," he manages after a long time. It might be the wrong thing to say, instead of _yes_ or _please_. 

"A ring? When?" 

"When you were in hospital." 

John moves Sherlock back enough to see his face, laughing. "We weren't even together."

"Yes, we were." 

John seems to process that, a smile still lingering on his face. A grin, almost. "Is that a yes, then?" 

Sherlock answers him by kissing him, and when he looks back on that night it seems that he barely stopped, after. They must have gone back to the hotel. They must have slept, at some point, but it doesn't feel that way. 

John had offered to be many things to him: a failsafe, a friend, a partner. For Sherlock, it isn't clear, exactly, what he could offer in return. He thinks about it after, with John lapsing in and out of sleep, waking long enough to press a kiss to Sherlock's shoulder, to tighten his arms around him, only to slacken when he slips away again. He looks at the ring on his finger, where John had put it, in dumb disbelief and joy. He doesn't know. It might take his whole life to work it out. But that was the gift John had just given him; the promise of time.


End file.
